Cape Town – There are only 105 days of usable water left if people in Cape Town continue to consume water at the current rate.
As of Monday's dam levels have dropped to 30%, which is 1.5 percentage points down from a week ago. With the last 10% of a dam’s water mostly not being usable, dam levels are effectively at about 20%.
However, consumption has continued to decline and is now at 751 million litres a day – 51 million litres above the collective usage target of 700 million litres a day.
The City of Cape Town said that despite efforts by some residents to use water sparingly, “it remains crunch time and reductions are vital as the draw-down rate of the dams stays pronounced”.
“The City has also been testing further pressure reduction initiatives to reduce consumption,” it said in a statement.
The City would be deploying “a basket of consumption reduction interventions”.
The City has appealed to its close to 1 million consumers to co-operate. It continues to engage with the top 20 000 consumers across residential, business, industrial and government properties to ensure that consumption is brought down.
“For our top 100 residential consumers, where leaks on private property were the cause for the unacceptably high use, private leaks have been identified and fixed.
“These consumers have been removed from the list.”
The City said it wants residents to take responsibility for consumption and then to reduce it.
“We are extremely encouraged by the response across all sectors.
“The City continues planning for the implementation of contingency and emergency measures in conjunction with the national Department of Water and Sanitation,” said the mayoral committee member for informal settlements, water and waste services and energy, councillor Xanthea Limberg.
Residents can contact [email protected] for queries or to report contraventions, or they can send an SMS to 31373. For more information, see www.capetown.gov.za/thinkwater