ARABELLA COUNTRY ESTATE
MAKING EVERY DROP COUNT
In the midst of a crippling regional water crisis, Arabella Country Estate leads the
way in responsible and sustainable water management.
Just a half-hour’s drive away, down the Hottentots-
Holland Mountains to the Bot River Lagoon in Kleinmond,
lies Arabella Country Estate. One of South Africa’s
leading lifestyle and golfing residential estates, Arabella
is a landmark in the beautiful Overberg region, with its
rolling lawns and its 113 hectares of pristine land. During
the Western Cape’s water crisis, the estate also became a
case study in how to manage water correctly.
Dr Roger Parsons, of Parsons and Associates Specialist
Groundwater Consultants, has been helping the estate
to develop and manage its groundwater supply for more
than 20 years now. ‘Two production boreholes were
In all the talk of ‘Day Zero’, along with the suburban stampede drilled in 1996, and those supplied the estate while it was
to buy JoJo tanks and the general panic around Level 6B water being developed,’ he says. ‘The big issue at Arabella is
restrictions, there was one number that stood out as the most that the groundwater has a lot of iron in it, so a treatment
worrying representation of the Western Cape’s deepening water process to remove the iron had to be developed. As
crisis. In 2017, levels at the Theewaterskloof Dam, which supplies Arabella expanded, we drilled more boreholes to make
about 40% of Cape Town’s water supply, fell to just 12.9%, with sure they had enough water.’
the last 10% mostly unreachable or unusable. Estates, homes
and businesses across the city faced a chilling reality: the dam Arabella currently has six production boreholes, which
was running dry. provide about 80% of the estate’s water supply. The
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