Residential Estate Industry Journal 5 | Page 32

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 32