The City of Cape Town on Monday said it was concerned about a water consumption increase from 505-million to 519-million litres per day and urged residents to continue with water saving efforts to protect Cape Town’s fragile dam system.
In a statement, the City said it has been a dry start to August, with some areas receiving just a quarter, or at most a third, of the long-term average rainfall for those areas. This has slowed down the rapid recovery of Cape Town’s dams which was experienced at the start of the winter months.
“Over the past few weeks, rainfall has been below average and this has drastically slowed down the recovery of the dams supplying water to Cape Town.
“We are in a much-strengthened position currently with consumption continuing to hover near the 500-million litre mark, as opposed to this time last year where we were consuming 608-million litres per day. In addition, dam levels this time last year were at 31.9% of storage capacity,” said the City’s deputy mayor Ian Neilson.
“However, we need to ensure that we all continue our water-saving efforts, especially in light of the low rainfall received over the last few weeks. We need to protect the water in our dams and ensure that we continue to build a buffer for the hot summer months ahead.”
He said water restrictions and the associated tariffs were also helping to preserve the water that the dams have.
“Until the National Department of Water and Sanitation deems it safe to begin a stepped reduction of the current water restriction levels, restrictions and the associated tariffs will remain in place. We thank all of our residents for their ongoing support and, as a City, we will continue with our advanced pressure management programme to keep water usage as low as possible," said Neilson.