Cape Town – The need to keep saving water and using water sparingly remains as pressing as ever despite the recent rain, Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille said on Sunday.
"While we had some rainfall this past week, this has not made a huge impact on our dam levels. Last Monday, our dam levels stood at 19.6 percent but with the last 10 percent of a dam’s water mostly not being useable, dam levels are effectively at 9.6 percent useable water.
"After the storm this past week, on Friday our dam levels stood at 20.4 percent and with the last 10 percent of water mostly not being usable, the dam levels are effectively at 10.4 percent," she said.
Because there had been a long period of dry weather, the first rain would saturate the catchment area and once the subsequent rain arrived, only then would there be an effective run-off into the dams. While there was some rain predicted for the next few days, continuous rainfall would be needed over many weeks and months for the dams to reach sufficient levels.
"We have yet to meet the collective water usage target of 600 million litres of water per day, so I am encouraging and urging residents to keep saving water as the need to use water sparingly remains as pressing as ever. Due to the unpredictability of weather patterns and the impacts of climate change, we don’t know when we will get sufficient rains again as Cape Town is a water-scarce region," De Lille said.
"Today [Sunday] I visited the city’s Think Water exhibition at the Canal Walk shopping centre where dozens of great water saving innovations were on display that can go a long way towards safeguarding our precious water resources," she said.
"With level four water restrictions already implemented we all need to get our daily usage down to less than 100 litres per person per day in total, whether at work, home, school, or elsewhere. I would like to thank the many residents and businesses who have made concerted efforts to save water and I encourage them to keep up these efforts."
Over 30 companies were exhibiting different ideas that ranged from water saving apps and water efficient toilet devices to greywater and rainwater harvesting systems, De Lille said.
The exhibition was in line with the city’s new organisational development and transformation plan (ODTP) which placed great emphasis on partnerships and innovation for a more sustainable and resilient future Cape Town. It demonstrated the resource efficiency priorities in the ODTP and recently adopted integrated development plan.
The city also had its own exhibition stand with a range of useful water-saving advice and tips for residents and businesses to adopt to help save water.
"We can only manage the drought crisis with the buy in and co-operation of all sectors, businesses, government departments, and residents. We are all in this together and we have to save water while there is still water to be saved. Water is life and we all need to strengthen our efforts to stretch the amount of water we have left."