Cape Town ’ s water crisis — most popular topic at WISA 2018
A number of foreign visitors were so sceptical about attending a water conference in Cape Town with Day Zero looming , that they threatened to cancel .
By Helgard Muller , Pr Eng
The Theewaterskloof Dam at the height of the drought , on 25 January 2018 , in Villiersdorp .
Fortunately , local contacts reassured them and , in the end , the visitors stated their pleasure in coming . The biannual WISA conference held in Cape Town , in June 2018 , was indeed very successful . Here are several points that I picked up in the sessions and workshops .
As can be expected , the Cape Town water crisis was a major feature of the conference and many presentations focused on what can be learnt from this experience . The announcement of Day Zero was a double-edged sword : on the one hand , it shocked the residents into commitment to save water , but it was also a severe blow to the tourism industry . One example : a B & B establishment stated that they started to receive cancellations immediately after the announcement of Day Zero and lost five months of revenue . ( See ed .’ s winning letter in Around the Water Cooler ).
Premier Helen Zille , at the opening ceremony , made a few remarks that stood out :
• She , as well as the mayor of Cape Town , was faced with the dilemma : “ Who do you listen to in a crisis ?” Politicians found themselves amid all and sundry who wanted to advise and bring their quick-fix solutions . Zille found that “ many of these so-called experts were merely trying to sell a product ”. Subsequently , “ the quality of your officials becomes very important ” as they must guide government ’ s decisions through this maze of advice from outside .
• Lessons learnt from Australia were “ not to jump to massive desalination plants as these are built at an excessive cost and when the rains and floods eventually follow the drought , government will be blamed for these huge white elephants ”.
• Zille reflected that the Cape Town water crisis was also a good thing , as it has drastically changed perceptions about water — not only in the Western Cape but also in South Africa as a whole .
• Another positive result was that many new and ingenious ways were developed to save and reuse water at household level . Unfortunately , this poses a new challenge to the Cape Town municipality : as more households switch to on-site sources , the demand on the municipal water supply system drops . The problem arises that it is the more affluent who can afford to go off the system and the poor are then left with a municipal water supply at a higher unit cost . This creates greater disparities in a society already skewed .
The speech by Samantha Yates ( secretary general of the Global Water Leaders Group , or GWLG ) was just another example of how many researchers now zoom in to learn from the Cape Town crisis as a case study .
She referred to a report published by the GWLG , titled A perfect storm — the hydropolitics of Cape Town ’ s water crisis .
The following is an abstract from this report :
What the Cape Town crisis shows is that preparing for drought requires a team effort — evidence-based science , pressure from the public , and political will . Cape Town ’ s perfect storm was driven by the mismanagement of funds and a lack of political will , coupled with environmental factors , which all contributed to one of the most severe urban droughts in modern history . The interplay of South African politics with environmental factors has led to a ‘ perfect storm ’ in Cape Town ( Figure 1 ).
36 Water Sewage & Effluent September / October 2018