WATCH: City opens new water collection point as fears of Cape taps running dry linger

Cape Town - The City has once again called

on Cape Town residents to remain “water wise”.

This comes after the City officially opened its second water collection point in Vredehoek on Wednesday.

Mayco member for water and waste services Xanthea Limberg said: “We’ve all experienced a severe drought and one of the key lessons we learnt is the importance of diversifying our water supply and resources and tapping alternative sources such as spring water.”

Limberg said the significance of the water collection point was to encourage residents to make use of alternative water supply and she urged residents to be “water wise”. The spring water, however, is not for drinking purposes, because it has not been treated, but it can be used for other needs to offset the demand for non-potable water.

“There’s a misconception that because dam waters are sitting at above 80% we’re in a far better position. And yes, we have seen a recovery of dams, but the 2019 rainfall patterns have shown that we’re not completely out of the woods. Our rainfall patterns are largely aligned to what we’ve seen in 2016 and we have no certainty to get good rainfall,” she said.

The City’s head of water demand management and operation implementation, Collin Mubadiro, said: “We did an analysis of springs around the city and found 70 throughout the city. Most of the springs we found, we can develop into something more tangible.”

Ward councillor Brandon Golding welcomed the springs. “This is our starting point, this is a bigger scheme to re-use water for multi purposes. I’m glad we’ve finally got here.”

As of Monday, Cape Town’s water consumption has for the past few weeks hovered around 700 million litres/day. Consumption for the past week in December was at 699 million litres/day. Dam levels for the same period are at 81,4%.

In November, Limberg said they would look into relief from punitive water tariffs this month.

“The new hydrological year begins on November 1 and we’re normally supposed to get an indication of our allocations and restrictions before then. But the national Department of Water and Sanitation and the users of the Western Cape water supply system advised the City that it needs extra time to do modelling to notify us about the allocations.

“We had a meeting at the end of November, but are waiting for formal written correspondence from the national department. Once we receive that we’ll be in a position to i nform residents,” she said.

At the highest tariff rates, using more than 35000 litres of water a month will cost R768.64 per 1000 litres, which the City describes as punitive.