City of Cape Town in talks with DWS to relax water restrictions

After its latest dam report heralded more good news, the City of Cape Town announced that it is in talks with national government to ease water restrictions across the city.

“The City of Cape Town is very encouraged to see dam levels rise above 65% after significant late-winter rainfall,” it wrote in a release on Monday. “It is hoped that this latest rain could provide sufficient motivation for finally easing the water restrictions.”

Plans to alleviate the water restrictions are currently being discussed with the Department of Water and Sanitation. However, don’t expect to see a heavy axe taken to the current stringent saving measures in place.

“Any relaxation of restrictions will at first be conservative. We cannot return to a business-as-usual attitude to water without risking water security in the years to come,” the City added.

The City of Cape Town hopes the recent rain will provide ‘sufficient motivation for finally easing the water restrictions’

At present, Cape Town remains under Level 6B water restrictions, limiting individuals to 50 litres of usage per day, or 6000 litres per month for a household of four.

These restrictions were first put in place in January 2018, when dam levels were in the 20% full range. The City noted then that #DayZero — its blanket term for the worst-case water disaster scenario — was “highly likely”.

Although the dams have since recovered drastically as of August, adding more than 45% to their combined reserves, the City of Cape Town’s deputy mayor Ian Neilson urges residents to continue to save water.

“Given the unpredictable nature of our rainfall, it is imperative that we diversify our supply for the future, and entrench the water-saving mind-set we have cultivated over the past year,” he added.

The City continues to use more water than its target of 450-million litres per day. 531-million litres per day were drawn from the dams on average last week.

Feature image: City of Cape Town