Cape Town Mayor, Patricia de Lille, has again appealed to residents to save water. She accompanied city officials to install water metres to restrict households with excessive water usage.
The City has already installed 19-thousand water metres in what De Lille has describes as desperate measures to save water.
The metres restrict the use of water to 350 litres per day.
De Lille has requested households with large families and those running small businesses to apply for an increase in their water allocation.
She’s denied that residents have to pay for the city’s failures to plan properly to deal with the drought.
“Rain is something we don’t have control over, but we living in a world affected by climate change, as the City of Cape Town 15 years ago we started a water conservation programme. If we didn’t do that we were going to be in a worse situation today, no use blaming, we in this boat together.”
Pinelands resident, Len Toucher says he doesn’t have a problem with water metres restricting excessive usage.
“For the last month it went up because we are builders here, we tried everything we can to keep it down. We losing plants every time as they die from not getting water. We got two buckets for every shower to use for the toilet, I buy bottles of water every week and it is very expensive, R18 a bottle now, we try to use that to save the taps. I don’t know what else to do.”
De Lille also interacted with households in Thornton where residents wanted 500-litres of water instead of 350.
“Three weeks ago they were here, I told them I’m going to the civic centre, they gave me the application forms so I can request for more water. When people come on board, they will have to pay a bill of R5 thousand, in council owned properties and people living in poor areas who qualify for indigent the city will pay for the water devices, but in areas where the people can afford they must pay for the water device.”
De Lille says the City is already benefiting from its aquifers, with nine-million litres of water coming from the Atlantis aquifer and 10 million litres from the Steenbras Dam.
She says two desalination plants at Strandfontein and Monwabisi Beach will each produce seven-million litres of water per day.
