Cape Town, home to Table Mountain, African penguins, sunshine and sea, is a world-renowned tourist destination. But it could also become famous for being the first major city in the world to run out of water.
Most recent projections suggest that its water could run out as early as March. The crisis has been caused by three years of very low rainfall, coupled with increasing consumption by a growing population.
The local government is racing to address the situation, with desalination plants to make sea water drinkable, groundwater collection projects, and water recycling programmes.
Meanwhile Cape Town's four million residents are being urged to conserve water and use no more than 87 litres (19 gallons) a day. Car washing and filling up swimming pools has been banned. And the visiting Indian cricket team were told to limit their post-match showers to two minutes.
Such water-related problems are not confined to Cape Town, of course.
Nearly 850 million people globally lack access to safe drinking water, says the World Health Organisation, and droughts are increasing.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by looorg on Saturday January 13 2018, @03:37PM (4 children)
Perhaps it wasn't the best idea ever to build towns in places that cant sustain the population. But then we have people that insist on living in places that gets hit by natural disasters over and over and over again and still they move back.
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Saturday January 13 2018, @05:20PM (2 children)
While your comment is quite correct, we humans fail to understand and protect our environment properly. Cape Town is surrounded by rivers but the drought has dried many of them but then again many have been dammed for power or to divert water to other places, which makes the prolonged drought much worse.
I have family in South Africa (not in Cape Town) and the water situation is generally bad everywhere because of the drought; saving water includes not flushing the toilets until absolutely necessary for example, something that would be found disgusting in America.
Then cities tend to grow beyond the wildest dreams of their founders and the load on the environment gets to be too much to be sustainable. Think of the California coast and valleys for example, how long can water last as demand expands? What measures will be acceptable once water is really scarce?
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday January 13 2018, @09:53PM
I believe we in America invented the phrase "If its yellow, let it mellow, if its brown, flush it down".
In the US, perfectly good toilets are being replaced at a fantastic rate with low-volume flush models. There's risk of a porcelain shortage.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Saturday January 13 2018, @10:20PM
There is that, it's not insignificant. Still lots of Towns or cities probably did fine when they where smaller. Cape Town is now around 3.5-4.0M or something like that? It might have grown to large to sustain itself from the surrounding area. They might not have what it takes to become or be a real Megacity. Still there are quite a few larger cities out in the desert and such that are doing fine so it might just be substandard municipals in combination with natural causes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 14 2018, @06:32PM
that's only possible with government stealing the money to do it. if people and companies had to pay for it themselves it would have worked it self out much quicker.