Cape Town will receive a desalination megaplant at the Cape Town Harbour before Day Zero hits in May.
This comes after City of Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille briefed the media during a visit to the Scientific Services Branch at the Athlone Wastewater Treatment Works yesterday.
The branch monitors the city’s water quality all year round. De Lille was certain that the plans and partnerships ahead of the mega plant were well under way, with three more additional desalination plants to be installed before the end of February at the V&A Waterfront, Strandfontein and Monwabisi.
“Cape Town will have three new desalination plants before the end of February. Two will produce seven million litres of water per day (Monwabisi and Strandfontein).
And then there is the one at the Waterfront that will bring an additional two million litres of water per day.
“The megaplant that we are looking at for more permanent use is at the Cape Town Harbour and the planning for that has started already. That will produce about 50 million litres of water per day.
“We do have a permanent plan too that we want to keep there. The Waterfront will take the planning from the City and they will be self-reliant (after February).
"So it is partnerships and people who are willing to work with the City,” she said.
While examining the scientific work at the Athlone Wastewater Treatment, De Lille was impressed when the special project officer, Robert Siebritz, said they were doing tests on algae in order to contribute to reusable water in the city.
“We tend to focus on the raw water before the treatment works. We monitor the compliance for wastewater works. Brandon Wynne (technician) arrived in August.
"We started working and training staff. If the organisms survive and if we can reuse them that is looking good in terms of reusable water,” said Siebritz.
The supervisor at the Athlone Wastewater Treatment, Ansie Smith, said they are using COD (chemical oxygen demand) for environmental treatment processes.
“Drinking water does not have a standard for COD. So COD is basically just for the treatment process that we use. Some areas are using their river water.
"But in the Western Cape we are not. But soon we will use our river water in order to make sure our environment stays healthy,” said Smith.
De Lille said: “I am proud of Capetonians. At the beginning of 2016 we were using 1.1billion litres of water per day. We are now on 582 million litres of water per day.
"As you can calculate we are 82 million litres above the 500 mark. I am confident that Capetonians will reach the 500 million goal.
"People must still continue to save water even though we have pushed Day Zero to May."