A spot at the foot of Table Mountain momentarily held a spiritual aura as religious, traditional and community leaders led about 100 people in praying for rain.
Yesterday's interfaith hour-long prayer service for rain, and calls for all to come on deck in managing the drought crisis gripping the metro and further afield, was initiated by the City.
Speaking at the event, mayor Patricia de Lille said Capetonians were in the midst of the worst drought in 100 years.
The city was now moving to Level 4 restrictions entailing a target of a daily overall collective use of 600 million litres, said De Lille.
“The Level 4 restrictions mean that all garden watering is prohibited and no topping up swimming pools, and (for people to start) flushing toilets with grey (dirty) water.”
With dam levels at 20.7% and the last 10% being mostly unusable, it brought dam levels effectively to 10%, De Lille said.
“We are now asking all residents to bring water consumption down to 100 litres per person per day.
This is possible if we use water only for essential bathing, drinking and cooking.”
In intervening, she personally visited a number of high water-consumption households and business sectors to ask them to reduce consumption and repair water leakages.
More interventions include the city allocating R22 million to employ additional staff to repair leaks and water management device faults.
Other large-scale pressure reduction programmes were being continued across the city to reduce consumption. Emergency interventions under way as dam levels decline, included reducing water pressure to a very low level across the metro.
While the city’s expansion of water supply schemes include emergency drilling of boreholes into the Table Mountain Group Aquifer.
This should yield approximately two million litres per day and expand that to 10 million litres per day.
The scheme also includes a small-scale water re-use for drinking-use plant.