Cape Town *May* Not Run Out of Water After All

We’ve seen modern cities grapple with historic, seemingly never-ending droughts before. That, unfortunately, is nothing new.

But the situation now unfolding in Cape Town, South Africa, is something new: a major city — a thriving global tourism destination, at that — on the cusp on running dry.

For the 3.7 million-some residents in metro Cape Town, South Africa’s oldest and second most populous urban area, "Day Zero" — the date the city’s depleted reservoirs are expected to officially hit empty — looms ominously. Day Zero was initially calculated to occur on April 22, although it has been periodically pushed back due to rain and water-saving measures. In April, city officials pushed the date back to 2019 — with one major caveat. Residents must main current water restrictions (50 liters per person per day).

The updated "Day Zero" is also dependent on how much rainfall occurs during South Africa's upcoming winter rain season, which runs from April to October.

"I would therefore like to urge all Capetonians not to relax their savings efforts," Executive Deputy Mayor Alderman Ian Neilson said in a statement. "While we are feeling more confident of avoiding Day Zero this year, we cannot predict the volume of rainfall still to come. If winter rainfall this year is as low as last year, or even lower, we are still in danger of reaching Day Zero early next year."

As of early April, the city's dams were less than 22 percent full, and the city is consuming 521 million liters on average per day. The goal is to reach 450 million liters per day.

With no water running through their taps, H2O-seeking residents will be forced to rely on 200 or so municipal water collection points that will be spread throughout the city. (Some trial distribution sites have been up and running for months now.) Secured by armed guards, the 24/7 rationing sites will allocate a daily allotment of 25 liters, or 6.6 gallons, per person. Residents requiring more than that are on their own. Twenty liters of water per day is the bare minimum for a person to maintain proper health and hygiene per World Health Organization standards.

Capetonians struggle to make do with less

While making do with just over 6 gallons of water per day is extreme for most Capetonians, many have been vigilantly watching their water usage for weeks, if not months.

As Time reports, a decent number of households have been dutifully obeying a 23 gallons-or-less rule that was mandated by the city late last year. With Day Zero looming, showers have been cut drastically short, cars have gone unwashed, once-lush lawns have been left to brown, swimming pools have been drained and shuttered and toilets, well, they’re not getting as flushed as regularly as they once were. "Unwashed hair is now a symbol of upright citizenship, and public restrooms are festooned with admonishments to 'let it mellow,'" writes Time.

But as mayoral committee member Xanthea Limberg explains to Reuters, a decent number of households heeding the warning and taking action simply hasn’t been enough to prevent Day Zero from lurching forward. (The city estimates that only 54 percent of residents are conserving enough to hit the 23 gallons or less per day mark.)

Limberg goes on to note that while Cape Town is home to many wealthy, water-guzzling residents, city officials have mostly refrained from blaming and shaming more affluent Capetonians. That tactic was employed in Southern California during its historic drought as a means of outing water-wasting scofflaws who continued to fill their pools and irrigate their expansive lawns despite restrictions. (Cape Town’s drought, the worst in over a century, just entered its third consecutive year, by the way.)

But according to ABC News, the city is allowing residents to view how much water their neighbors are — or aren’t — consuming via a newly launched online database that makes public each Cape Town household’s water habits based on municipal water bills. The website, which was unveiled to help raise awareness as the situation has grown increasingly dire with each passing day, has received mostly negative feedback from the public.

"The potential water-saving benefit for all of Cape Town of making water consumption indicators publicly available outweighs any privacy issues at this stage of the crisis‚" Zara Nicholson, a spokeswoman for mayor De Lille, said in defense of the website.

In another effort to rally public support, especially among children, the #SaveWater campaign has unveiled a mascot named "Splash." The anthropomorphic water droplet is meant to help raise awareness about water conservation, and it has been garnering a lot of attention — albeit possibly due more to Splash's alarming appearance than the mascot's actual message.

A catastrophe in the making?

In addition to three years of woefully minimal rainfall, Cape Town's current crisis was sparked by a dramatic increase in water usage amongst the Western Cape region’s fast-growing population.

Meanwhile, officials are scrambling to open desalianation plants, which transform seawater into clean drinking water, and drill wells that would tap into underground aquifers and help supplement Cape Town’s dwindling water supply. However, many fear that these efforts are too little, too late and won’t be up and running until just before, or even after, Day Zero.

In addition to the detrimental impact that Cape Town’s water shortage is having on residents, particularly low-income and disadvantaged South Africans, there are serious concerns about the city’s tourism industry, which is a massive economic driver in the region and in South Africa as a whole. Over 2 million visitors from around the globe flock to the historic port city each year, most of them coming for the pristine white sand beaches, lush natural scenery, wineries and laid-back, multicultural vibe. Cape Town has long positioned itself as a far-flung yet sophisticated paradise — but will travelers stay away if this particular paradise doesn’t involve running water?

"Running out of water in places that have a highly developed water infrastructure is not that common," Bob Scholes, a professor of systems ecology at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, told Bloomberg back in December when the situation was looking slightly less grim. "I know of no example of a city the size of Cape Town running out of water. It would be quite catastrophic."