The City of Cape Town says not enough residents are saving water and even more stringent water restrictions is the only way to delay “day zero” expected to hit the city on 20 May 2018. The city says level six water restrictions will be implemented from the 1 January. Collective consumption remains more than a million litres, which is above the target of 500 million litres per day.
Cape Town Mayor Patricia de Lille says some households have heeded the city’s campaign to save water. However, more than half of the city residents are still not doing enough to lower their usage.
De Lille says this has left the city no choice but to start installing water metres at the properties of high consumers to restrict their excessive usage of water. Dam levels are down and the usable water level is at 25.1%.
Water saving measures are being stepped up to avoid day zero in May next year when taps will run dry. De Lille says the new restrictions will include a limited amount of water usage for households per month and the 87.5 litres per person per day remains in place whether at home, work or elsewhere.
“Level 6 will come on the 1 January, what that will means is that, every households must restrict their water usage to 10 500 litres of water per month, it is still the 87 litres of water per person a day, but the monthly usage must be restricted below the 10 .5 litres, it’s still subject to exemption granted by Minister Gigaba.”
On Tuesday, a full council sitting adopted a motion to impose a temporary drought levy. The charge will be a sliding scale and will depend on the value of the property. However, residents are up in arms over the new measures.
“We can have a lot of water here, if we can connect the mountain water because we are near to the mountain and now all of a sudden this City, I don’t know what is happening, I think what is disturbing from the start is to allow you to purchase water like electricity, I have come to purchase R5 00 for the month and still the water is not enough, I think the council has taken too long to investigate as to how to overcome the water issue.”
De Lille says they want to raise R1 billion through the levy for vital water projects. The proposed implementation date is 1 February. The Western Cape is experiencing its worst drought in a century. Click below for more on the story:
