Cape Town Mayor Patricia de Lille says exploratory drill work into the Table Mountan Group Aquifer is progressing well.
She visited the project in the Steenbras catchment area near Grabouw.
Test boreholes are being drilled to help map the way forward as part of the Western Cape’s programme to alleviate its water crisis.
The initial yield from this project is expected to be 10 million litres of water per day that will be pumped straight into the Steenbras Dam.
De Lille says various projects are underway while 12 more are in the final stages of planning.
She says: “If we put in more boreholes we’ll be able to add later on an extra 50 to 60 million litres of water per day. So the aquifers is a good way of tapping into the source that we’ve never used in the city before.”
“We cannot rely on rain-water alone to fill our dams, we have to start tapping into the water from the aquifers,” she adds.
