Cape Town’s impending Day Zero has been pushed back by four days to April 16, as efforts to “defeat Day Zero” ramp up.
The City of Cape Town on Tuesday said collaborative efforts to scale back water use were resulting in small, but significant victories, showing that “residents are coming together and cutting water consumption”.
“Their efforts have shown fruit. We have started to push back Day Zero and we can defeat it altogether if we keep going,” Democratic Alliance leader Mmusi Maimane said.
Water consumption has successfully been cut to an average of 580-million litres a day over the past week and to 540-million litres a day for the past few days.
However, this is still short of the 450-million-litre-a-day target, roughly equating to below 50 ℓ/d for each person.
However, an additional 67-million litres a day for 60 days has been secured – as part of the 120-million-litre augmentation project – starting early in February, ahead of the initial target of May.
This water will be transferred, through collaborative efforts from the farming community of the Elgin-Grabouw valley and the City of Cape Town, from the Palmiet-Kogelberg dam, which has had excellent rainfall and is full.
“Drilling work on the Cape Flats Aquifer is being accelerated aggressively, and we will provide more detail on timelines and yields in the coming weeks,” he added.
Further, the next few weeks will see the city reducing water pressure in high-use areas across the city to further reduce consumption.