First Major City to go dry. Not the only though...just the first.
At the foot of the Devil’s Peak in Cape Town, well-to-do residents turn up each day to fill jerrycans from a bubbling spring. It is not that the cool, mountain waters are believed to have special powers, but a reflection of the deepening crisis facing South Africa’s second city.
Within three months, Cape Town is at risk of going from a tourist haven and hub for the wine industry to becoming the world’s first big metropolis to run out of water after a years-long drought.
“We have reached the point of no return,” Patricia de Lille, Cape Town’s mayor, warned this month. With anger in her voice she added: “It is quite unbelievable that a majority of people do not seem to care.”
It is likely to get much worse. Barring a drastic improvement in conservation efforts, at some point in April this year — on or about the 21st, according to the latest estimates — Cape Town will wake up to ‘Day Zero’, when toilets and taps will run dry.
If that happens, businesses say that overnight they will either have to shut down or drastically cut back on staff reporting for duty, heaping more pressure on a stagnant economy. Local government-controlled distribution points under armed guard will be the only way thousands of residents are able to access water — at a strict limit of 25 litres per day.
The remaining piped water would be prioritised for hospitals as well as standpipes in the poorer townships to prevent a public health catastrophe. Helen Zille, premier of Western Cape, the province around Cape Town, has conceded that managing the queues in a city of nearly 4m people will be a “logistical nightmare”.
the scoop.
https://www.ft.com/content/8a438352-fc76-11e7-a492-2c9be7f3120a
At the foot of the Devil’s Peak in Cape Town, well-to-do residents turn up each day to fill jerrycans from a bubbling spring. It is not that the cool, mountain waters are believed to have special powers, but a reflection of the deepening crisis facing South Africa’s second city.
Within three months, Cape Town is at risk of going from a tourist haven and hub for the wine industry to becoming the world’s first big metropolis to run out of water after a years-long drought.
“We have reached the point of no return,” Patricia de Lille, Cape Town’s mayor, warned this month. With anger in her voice she added: “It is quite unbelievable that a majority of people do not seem to care.”
It is likely to get much worse. Barring a drastic improvement in conservation efforts, at some point in April this year — on or about the 21st, according to the latest estimates — Cape Town will wake up to ‘Day Zero’, when toilets and taps will run dry.
If that happens, businesses say that overnight they will either have to shut down or drastically cut back on staff reporting for duty, heaping more pressure on a stagnant economy. Local government-controlled distribution points under armed guard will be the only way thousands of residents are able to access water — at a strict limit of 25 litres per day.
The remaining piped water would be prioritised for hospitals as well as standpipes in the poorer townships to prevent a public health catastrophe. Helen Zille, premier of Western Cape, the province around Cape Town, has conceded that managing the queues in a city of nearly 4m people will be a “logistical nightmare”.
the scoop.
https://www.ft.com/content/8a438352-fc76-11e7-a492-2c9be7f3120a
