Level 5 water restrictions have hit Cape Town, and this means from now on households are restricted to using 20kl per month.
Using more than that means the City may fine you between R5 000 and R10 000.
Where there’s non-compliance, users can also be subject to an admission of guilt fine or, in accordance with Section 36(4) of the City’s water by-law, a water management device will be installed on the property, which the account holder will be billed for - ranging between R4 560 and R4 732.
Managers of commercial properties must ensure their monthly consumption of municipal water is reduced by 20% compared with a year ago.
Mayor Patricia de Lille made these announcements yesterday, as efforts to save water have been strengthened.
De Lille said the City had made strides in lowering water pressure over the last three months, but there was room for further measures to reduce water pressure.
More pressure reduction is likely to result in supply interruptions in higher-lying areas, De Lille said, and multi-storey buildings that did not make use of pumps and overhead tanks were likely to experience supply problems.
Residents were advised to keep an emergency store of between 2-5 litres of water for drinking and basic hygiene, De Lille said.
The average provincial dam levels were at 32.4% at the end of last week, compared to more than 100% in 2014.
The national Department of Water and Sanitation is assessing 12 water abstraction licensing applications made by the City.
Of the 12, three are for the abstraction of water for domestic and industrial use, and nine are for the construction of roads and houses in wetland areas within the city.
Water and Sanitation Minister Nomvula Mokonyane recently announced that three licences should be completed by the end of this month.
These licences are for the Berg Water Projects; the Theewaterskloof Dam; and future abstractions from springs.
The department is also processing an abstraction Water Use Licence application from the West Coast District Municipality for the Swartland and Misverstand Schemes.
De Lille said: “Notwithstanding the immense effort that many Capetonians have taken to reduce water consumption during the past year, there needs to be a further decrease in consumption if Cape Town is to safely navigate itself through the drought.
'Since July 1, the City’s goal has been to reduce consumption to 500 million litres per day. As of last week, consumption stood at 599 million litres per day. With the winter rainfall season likely to end in the next three to four weeks, we simply have to get used to using less water as we enter the summer season.”
The province has been granted increased powers under the Disaster Management Act to co-ordinate urgent water supply projects in municipalities, and instructions have been issued to municipalities on managing their water demand and restrictions levels.
Last week Western Cape Premier Helen Zille said geo-hydrologists had been appointed in all districts to manage groundwater operations, and engineers had partnered with municipalities to track their water usage.
Joyene Isaacs, the head of the province’s agriculture department, said assistance to farmers would have totalled about R68 million by the end of last month. About R11m has been spent a month on animal feed to support about 1 300 farmers, most of them smallholders.
An analysis by the department’s economists had previously found that a 10% reduction in yields, as a result of the drought, could cost the economy R3.2 billion and place
17 000 jobs under threat.