Cape Town could be the first city to run out of water | Hacker News Reader

Cape Town could be the first city to run out of water

bbc.com

204 pointstonteldoos138 comments

I live in Cape Town, and this article is missing some points about whats been going on:

1. "Day 0" has been moved forward - we're now expected to run out of water 21 April.

2. The daily limit of water per person is 87l but only ~50% of consumers meet this target

3. This is considered a 1/1000 year event (in contrast to 1/100 experienced elsewhere in the country recently). However due to increased population this is being called "the new normal".

4. Water allocation between residential/agriculture was done at some national level, meaning the province wasn't able to manage the supplies correctly.

5. 6/7 water relief projects are behind schedule - these include desalination plants and aquifer pumps.

6. We lose 15% of our water through leaks - much lower than the world average but not as good as the best (around 10% in Australia and New Zealand)

Some other personal notes: 1. There has been talk of tapping the aquifers for decades - the studies haven't been prioritised and we still don't know how much we can safely take. The outlying areas of Cape Town are essentially marshes and during normal rainfall seasons are prone to flooding, so there is definitely some space but noone knows how much.

2. The city has lost R1.6b ($130m) in water fees due to reduced usage, so now we're facing a "drought tax". To me this is bullshit but thats a whole other post.

3. The restrictions should not be eased once the dams are full - with climate change and increasing population its only a matter of time until we run out of water and no amount of rainfall is going to help

4. When we run out of water there will be water trucks and collections points, but there has been no talk of sanitation - I suspect a lot of people are going to get really sick.

Its just been announced that from Feb 1st the daily limit is going to be 50l and the drought tax is off the table.

https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2018-01-18-de-...

I thought climate change was supposed to provide easier access to water?

Why did you think that?

I would guess rising seas. Water gets closer to you, literally.

Have you ever tried drinking sea water? It tastes salty. The short of it being: It makes you thirstier; drinking it is worse than drinking nothing.

Desalination is expensive in many ways. If it was a viable way of acquiring water (which it is in some places, like literal deserts) then these places would have already done it. Hence rising sea levels provide no additional access drinkable water.

But it has what plants crave.

Not sure if you're being facetious, but saltwater kills most plants, with a few exceptions.

And just yesterday, I was thinking no one here would need to explain who Mike Judge is to the general audience.

"It's got what plants crave" is a line from his movie Idiocracy. It is directly relevant the discussion at hand, but it's also a zero-effort joke that contributes nothing new.

Well, Idiocracy was release over 11 years ago, so young adults might not have heard of it. Hope I haven't made you feel old :)

I for one got the reference. but HN comment style strongly discourages low-effort jokes. It doesn't add information. I'm not surprised that it was downvoted, whether people "got it" or not. This is fine, HN is not reddit.

God forbid somebody makes a joke! This is a professional website, grim attitude is required.

> a zero-effort joke that contributes nothing new

> low-effort jokes. It doesn't add information.

And then

> God forbid somebody makes a joke!

You're misreading what is being said.

Your presumption was half correct, but that movie might be my only blind spot in his oeuvre. Nonetheless I thank you for the clarification.

Water supplies implicitly mean freshwater supplies. Sea level rising can't help that (seawater is not usable directly, and for desalination plants the bottleneck is their capacity and power usage, not amount of seawater available) but it can make it worse e.g. if certain aquifers become saltwater.

And, since most power-generation in South Africa is from coal, desalination - it seems to me - is only aggravating the problem (climate change) over the long run.

Yes, we should probably power those plants from some renewable/sustainable source, but that's a different discussion for another day.

> since most power-generation in South Africa is from coal

It's sad and crazy that this is still not changing. SA is a very sunny country.

Not sure why you were downvoted. You weren't the one making a facetious remark, simply explaining one.

> explaining one

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16176246

I don't get it. This is just a link to another attempt to explain the facetiousness of another comment which was itself also downvoted. Why don't we downvote facetious comments instead of the comments that try to redeem them?

I'm saying that it looks like an earnest explanation of a comment that was not facetious.

That's why the explanation as if it was facetious gets the downvote.

Especially since it's not at all baseless. Outside of the subtropics rainfall is expected to increase. But drought length can also increase. It's complicated.

More rainfall?

Even if, it's salt water https://www.thesouthafrican.com/cape-town-water-crisis-desal...

It should not be surprising that the effects of climate change vary from place to place as weather systems move or are disrupted.

Cape Town is at the bottom of Africa, but at 33.9° S it is roughly as far south as Tunisia and the Mediterranean, or Los Angeles, California are north. To pick other coastal places.

The climate is "Mediterranean" with rain in winter sweeping in over the sea from the west, and hot dry summers. (1)

But the area to the north of Cape Town, towards the equator is dryer, even along the coast. In fact it becomes harsh desert by the time you reach Namibia (2).

So it only takes a small shift of the weather systems away from the equator to impact the winter rainfall that reaches Cape Town.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Town#Climate

http://www.capewatersolutions.co.za/rainwater-harvesting/cap...

http://www.grainsa.co.za/images/Articles/2012-08/reenval_fig...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeleton_Coast

Capetonian here as well. I'm honestly more than a little bit worried about the situation.

Well, that's interesting. Are there companies that own water capacity in countries? Might be a good long term investment.

Not sure how to interpret this statement..

One part of me is disgusted at someone profiting from bad planning and misery of others, the other thinks that this is something that really needs investing.

I meant this in a positive, not negative way. A for-profit company, if done properly, will be able to introduce the required infrastructure where necessary. It should (theoretically at least) also be run in a better way -- if the infrastructure isn't functioning properly, no profits are being made.

"if done properly", state infrastructure can do this just as well. I'd have a look at the Carillion bankruptcy before claiming that the private sector is a solution.

The problem is that state's aren't really motivated to get things done in a cost efficient manner. If the government in SA is like the US, employees are not rewarded for doing anything beyond the bare minimum to prove that they are still alive. In a private business, the employees have to help the business towards its goal of making money, so all of the incentives are aligned to be successful (employees want promotions and not to get fired, the investors don't want to lose money).

> The problem is that state's aren't really motivated to get things done in a cost efficient manner.

And businesses aren't really motivated to provide cheap water or more than bare-minimum health standards.

There are obvious pros and cons on both sides of that debate.

>And businesses aren't really motivated to provide cheap water or more than bare-minimum health standards.

Neither are governments (see Flint).

Someone will surely try your suggestion at some point, and I hope we don't get to find out what the Enron of water supply looks like.

"Newly discovered tapes have revealed how the energy corporation Enron shut down at least one power plant on false pretences, deliberately aggravating California's crippling 2001 blackouts with the aim of raising prices."

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2005/feb/05/enron.usnew...

This would maybe make sense if there was a competitive market, but, how can you have a competitive market for running water in a single city?

Maybe in the "real world" - its not about money, its about prioritization - and this is South Africa - the tender for water infrastructure would be awarded to a human resources company and money would be squandered on inferior infrastructure. There has simply not been enough priority put on upgrading water supply for the two decades we have known about the ever decreasing dam levels. Its not new - there were other priorities at national level and provincial level - and water problem was shunted, every time as a problem for later. Its not that government/municiplaities were not able to do the work -it was a question of who was paying for it. If a private company wanted to do this the expenditure would have been exorbitant - with very little hope of being remunerated because the income would have remained static - the municipalites would have less budget to maintain the systems and no private company would be able to invest that amount of money and make a profit in any short term.

This is the great strength of capitalism. We might hear about the plot of South African and mourn their descent into dehydration as a dark future that awaits many. Or, the capitalists among us might realize that there is money to be made in providing water, and thereby resources are allocated to providing water, and that dark future is (hopefully) prevented.

There is at least one self-sufficient desalination ship for hire that could apparently just about cover the entire city's needs on its own. It is also apparently very exensive so we are hoping to avoid that. I'd expect that's the kind of company that would be useful in these sorts of disasters.

Reminds me startlingly of this:

https://youtu.be/Bu2wNKlVRzE?t=4m40s

(recommend this film if you haven't seen it)

Edit: it gets more depressing the more you look...

... https://youtu.be/2sWhvOaavTQ?t=44s M.Burry on his investments (2010)

... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meXnifcAwN8 Morningstar: Why invest in water? (2015)

On point 4 - my understanding is that the poorest areas (which are at most risk of disease outbreaks) will not have their water cut. Rather, everyone else will have their water cut first while some water still remains in the dams, which is specifically allocated for those areas and will last long enough until the mid-year rain. I last read this a while ago though, so things may have changed.

Yes, this was mentioned today in the news on one of the radio stations. It went like "the poorer communities that rely on communal taps, will not have their water cut, because they already collect water at those taps".

This is sadly a travesty coming.

On the first point 4, it's something that many people don't realise. Water policy in this context is set on a National level. All these Youtubers and Facebook protestors don't understand that a Municipality can't simply shut off water to farms/mines. Various approaches were already discussed prior to the Water Act of 1998:

http://www.dwa.gov.za/Documents/Policies/nwpwp.pdf

But as it says in that document - it's National Policy. The government will need to make the call. There may well be provision for disaster areas, but the government doesn't think CPT qualifies.

On the second point 4, there's a already a health concern with regards to our current water supply. Cracks in pipes in the existing infrastructure allow impurities to enter our water supply. When the pipes are at full pressure this doesn't happen. However, when the pressure is dropped (as what is currently happening in various suburbs), the pressure is not enough to keep these impurities out, and you end up with a contaminated supply in some areas.

Does government corruption / incompetence come into play in making this situation worse than it should be?

> Does government corruption / incompetence come into play

Of course there is a political dimension.

The SA national government (ANC) is from a different party to the Cape Town local government (Democratic Alliance, the main opposition party).

So there is tension between local and national governments. They try to make each other look bad.

Hard to prove, it it does look like the National government is either just neglecting Cape Town or deliberately encouraging it to fail.

And they are corrupt, particularly the national government, yes.

https://www.biznews.com/undictated/2017/12/15/cape-town-wate...

https://www.biznews.com/thought-leaders/2016/12/05/sa-water-...

I'm not entirely convinced that it is due to malice. Keep in mind that the Department of Water and Sanitation has been declared bankrupt, so I think it's mostly incompetence.

http://ewn.co.za/2017/02/12/report-water-and-sanitation-depa...

Government corruption and incompetence is 100% responsible for this, not climate change.

I think this is a decent summary:

https://youtu.be/nOvmjs0J_QQ

Regarding the policy being set at national level - I've seen mention of the Western Cape seceding - how realistic was that, and has this had any effect on that? I'm ex Durban/Johannesburg, abandoned the rainbow nation 20 or so years ago with zero confidence in its future, and I'm afraid it was the right call; part of me would love to return, and the WC (there's a pun there) seceding would interest me for a move there.

Well, there's an exodus from the rest of the country to the W. Cape. They call it 'semigration'. Property was up 12% a while ago when all other provinces saw a decline I think (except Gauteng; they were up 3%). As a young person of the wrong demographic here though, myself and most of my friends are preparing for possible departure for a few different reasons. If you are already established in a field with an overseas nest egg that can't be touched by SA inflation though, then Cape Town is probably one of the best cities to live in on the planet. If you know what you're doing, living here is fantastic.

Can you elaborate on what makes CT so good? My South African friends always say this but I can't get a straight answer out of them why it's so great.

The joke used to be that the WC is where you emmigrated to if you didn't want to emmigrate :)

What's the "wrong demographic"? Or..what is the right demographic?

To answer your question, I haven't met anyone in Cape Town who takes a WC secession seriously. There is a very small political party that advocates for it, be its treated as one of the joke parties.

Agreed entirely. Used to live in Durban and left >10 years ago now with zero confidence in the nation. I won't be surprised to see the whole country descend into chaos soon.

The apartheid government may have been morally reprehensible, but at least it knew how to run a country. Either option is kind of shitty…

The apartheid government no longer exists because it caused the country to descend into so much chaos that the rulers gave up trying to continue.

So, by the standard you imply with your comparison, the apartheid government—even more certainly than the present regime—did not know how to run a country.

The apartheid government no longer exists because (1) open racism was no longer tenable in the face of an evolving society, and (2) the worldwide sanctions placed on it became too great.

That's fine, but that's also completely orthogonal to the point, which is that:

1/ By most standards, the effectiveness of government has plummetted since the end of apartheid. Crime is up; corruption has increased; resources are running out (nation-wide electricity blackouts last decade, now water); etc.

2/ Open government-sponsored racism still exists today, but most of it is considered to be commendable under the banner of affirmative action.

If we were to take race entirely out of the picture, the apartheid regime would be considered far more effective than the ANC regime. That, of course, is neither realistic nor fair… But we should aspire to a post-racial world where we race is no longer relevant, where both apartheid and affirmative action are considered revolting abominations, but also where we judge governments based on their net effectiveness.

It's imposible to divorce the effectiveness of government from global phenomenon and long-term knock-on effects from previous governments. For example, the brownout crisis - was it because the ANC government mismanaged funding and refused to repair, renew and build electrical power plants, or was it because the situation left by the apartheid government was unsustainable, and the ANC was left with a "you deal with it" post-it note? It's difficult to know without getting into the specifics of each issue.

My point is that comparing government effectiveness is not as easy as looking at results. This was exemplified by many of the communist satellite states to the USSR, which it sponsored for political gain to its own economic detriment. The satellite states flourished under communism, and as soon as the regime collapsed they suffered - was it the newly-elected democratic government's fault that industry had collapsed and there was rampant inflation, or was it just a long-term effect of previous government policy?

Fair point, but choosing the electricity crisis as an example is not helping your claim - the Apartheid lot left us with something like 50% overcapacity and almost the cheapest electricity in the world at the time. We actually have less electricity generating capacity right now than at that time. The lack of generting capacity has severely constrained our economy since. When the crisis first bit in the 2000s, many mines had to shut down for the first time in 200 years of continuous operations.

The government had an initial plan to redirect overcapacity in many areas (not just electricity) to rolling out services to those neglected by the Apartheid govt, and then after that to start building infrastructure again (not sure of specifics, maybe 5 years on?). The problem is that in most cases, this never happened. Hence the limits of most infrastructure are gradually being hit, with a knock-on effect for the economy.

If you have 50% overcapacity you have completely failed to plan your electricity system - that't not really a measure of success

It was a different time - my understanding is that having a multiply redundant system was important for an isolated pariah state. Think of it like the strategic petroleum reserves in certain isolated states of today. Of course none of that was necessary once SA rejoined the global community. This extra capacity could have been carefully mothballed for later use; instead we are now building 2x brand new coal stations, each of which will be the largest coal plants in the world.

>But we should aspire to a post-racial world where we race is no longer relevant, where both apartheid and affirmative action are considered revolting abominations, but also where we judge governments based on their net effectiveness.

Hear, hear. While "the better angels of our nature" should inform our aspirations, the political, social and economic facts-on-the-ground should inform what action should be taken in order to bring us closer to the ideal.

Affirmative-action is a symptomatic treatment (that could be argued as being punitive) which achieves little-to-nothing in solving the root-problem, while creating a whole new set of problems. Successful integration of former-colonial and indigenous peoples in ZA would have been an unprecedented achievement, but adopting policies that are so obviously regressive will not bring that into reality.

>2. The city has lost R1.6b ($130m) in water fees due to reduced usage, so now we're facing a "drought tax". To me this is bullshit but thats a whole other post.

Why?

In already deployed networks, decreased usage means the cost per client, or the cost per unit used will go up.

This is a problem with any network that charges for delivery based on usage and cannot easily cut off unused parts of the network.

Because that shouldn't be charged after the fact, ideally it should be priced into the water prices as consumers purchase it.

That's assuming pricing scales linearly.

More likely, it takes a flat-ish $x to maintain the infrastructure, and the reduced usage means they can't reach that minimum $x threshold.

To not charge it after the fact, you’d have to recoup costs much faster in the earlier years of the system existence, causing crushing water bills to exist.

It’s not a policy issue, it’s an education issue.

It's also a problem with networks that bill by usage but spread both fixed and usage-variable costs across the expected usage, even if they don't have issues cutting off unused parts of the network; a sharp drop in usage underfunds the costs that aren't variable.

Are you looking to get out?

It doesn't sound like things are trending in a good directly and water supply scarcity seems likely to cause instability and other issues.

Why stay there?

So my situation is I bought a house here, still paying off the bond, so selling is not really an option at the moment (haven't paid off that much and no one wants to buy a house in an area where there will be no water) Not really a situation where I can just cut my losses (buying a house is a lot of debt) and go

Have they rolled out smart water meters to monitor consumption and bill per liter? I would think that would be very effective and a fair way to ration the remaining water

You could even have progressive rates

That would also prompt people to install water saving devices

The mayor has avoided answering that question on some radio shows. There's the cost of such meters, and the conspiracies that some of the water usage offenders are wealthy people who might be supporting the ruling party in the city or province.

When flying into Cape Town, you still see a large number of pools that look well-maintained, which is scary. I'm convinced that some residents just quietly pay excessive water penalties, and are let off the hook.

Given the Listeria breakout that's happening, and the "falling" or unprepared public health sector, it's a matter of weeks till we deal with a huge crisis.

Disclaimer: I have been working in CT for a few months, fly in and out every week.

It’s going to get worse before it gets better (if)!

Your description point to infrastructure decay.

On the point 3. Climate change is causing many 1/1000 and 1/100 type events to happen more often; especially as it relates to rainfall, like record droughts and monsoons. I wouldn't be surprised if this is the new normal because of that as well (which will make the population issue even worse).

Another Cape Town resident here. I've been trying to consolidate a lot of this information (and links to official sources) on http://www.capetowndrought.com. Just sharing in case helpful. :)

A few points from a Capetonian observing a potential disaster in slow motion:

(a) I don't know how claims about the % of users who are toeing the water restriction line can possibly be accurate. what is the population of Cape Town - last major census in 2011. What if there are actually 50 000 more people in CT than we think?

(b) water production is at just about half of what it was at peak in Jan 2015 despite population growth. This is surely a remarkable achievement, presumably a result of considerable collective action. Source (production graph here: http://resource.capetown.gov.za/documentcentre/Documents/Cit...)

(c) the most egregious users have had water restriction devices installed - maybe the bar is too high and city should be stricter about when this measure is taken.

(d) the daily production of water has been more or less constant since July. This tells me that there is not that much more give. The only serious reduction I could see is through very difficult to enforce measures e.g. buckets only instead of showers. However I would prefer to do this now instead of having dry taps in April.

On a personal note: many home owners have boreholes and full rainwater tanks (it is difficult to store more than a few rainy days' worth of water). My parents' tank is +- 20 days of water at 87l pp per day, although they do not currently have a way to purify the water. My block has a plan to put borehole water into the flats. I don't think anyone knows how long borehole water will last though as there has been a massive spike in drilling.

We are a couple living in Cape Town. For the past 6 months we've been averaging 60 litres per person per day, with a downward trend. We don't have a swimming pool. We don't water the garden or lawn. It looks hideous, but those steps were easy gains.

It's our water closet habits that had to change drastically. If it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, let it drown. We shower, very quickly, with 2 buckets and try to catch as much water as possible. We turn off the shower while lathering up with soap and would dip our sponges in the buckets if we need to add water to the mix. It's basically taking a bucket bath in a shower and a quick rinse afterwards.

We use the gathered water to drown the brown. Sometimes a quick flush with water from the cistern is necessary, but we can limit the flush by lifting the lever (unlike older cisterns).

Other people have installed tanks in their backyards to collect rainwater from the roof, but we don't have the space.

It's an inconvenience, but so far it hasn't been too difficult to get under the 87 litre target. It just required some attention, and very importantly, frequent monitoring. Frankly, I'm disgusted that more than half of my fellow citizens couldn't reach the target.

For anyone wanting to read more about this, here are some articles and data from the Climate System Analysis Group at the University of Cape Town.

This article explains the severity of the drought, and calculates that the return interval for a two-year drought of this severity is 1150 years (!), which mostly absolves the City of blame for not anticipating it: http://www.csag.uct.ac.za/2017/08/28/how-severe-is-this-drou...

Here, you can see an interactive plot of rainfall in Cape Town. Highlight 2017, 2016 and 2015 to see the reason for the current crisis: http://www.csag.uct.ac.za/current-seasons-rainfall-in-cape-t...

Addressing the scaremongering by the City around "the new normal": http://www.csag.uct.ac.za/2017/11/01/is-cape-towns-drought-t...

Describing the difficulty of forecasting this drought: https://theconversation.com/why-cape-towns-drought-was-so-ha...

> calculates that the return interval for a two-year drought of this severity is 1150 years (!)

This is however calculated based on historical weather data from 1920s onwards. With climate change ongoing and increasing, we can't rely on historical weather patterns staying accurate for future predictions. Old every 100 or 1000-year droughts can become every 10-year droughts.

We've been looking at reducing water use this spring; someone else might find these products useful:

OAS(1) showers cap water at 5-10L per use, no matter how long you shower. Getting this installed also means we can swap our water heater to run on the solar array entirely, since you're not flushing all that energy down the drain while you shower.

Waterless urinals(2) use no water at all. They work by keeping a layer of oil in the trap instead. Pee sinks under the oil layer and out of the trap, oil stays in the trap since it floats on top. So, stays just as clean as a regular toilet, with no water hookup.

Disclosure: None, I've got nothing to do with these companies, other than buying their products for my cabin.

(1) https://orbital-systems.com/

(2) https://www.waterless.com/

"How do I know when to change the Filters?

You can find out if you need to change the Oas’s Purification Filter via the Oas app, showing the overall status of your Filters."

I wonder if they're using Bluetooth or other local networking or if this really means my shower needs to connect to the Internet.

The economics of those OAS filters don't motivate me much, since two adults taking 15 minute showers a day each would result in $40/month for filters alone. 15 minute showers per day per person in a normal shower would cost me less than $15/month in water bills.

Obviously there are use cases that need that more than I do, since I live in a wet, temperate area with plentiful water tables, but I think it demonstrates that our problems with water, and pollution, and other environmental issues have come from taking the cheapest/easiest options, so we need to work hard to make more attractive sustainable solutions for the average person.

I'm currently in Brisbane, and arrived here while the big drought was still in progress (around 2008). Numerous restrictions, legislation for water saving measures, desal plants, etc were being implemented at the time, with pretty astounding results in terms of average water consumption.

The drought broke in January 2011, and it's a little sad to see how much that was learnt, has been forgotten in the last 7 years. Desal plants all but mothballed, average consumption gone up (almost double the drought levels again), etc. I really hope the drought in Cape Town breaks soon (I have many friends there), but I hope they don't unlearn the lessons, and kill infrastructure when it does.

Interestingly, late last year, it was pointed out by the authorities that the dams are at warning (pre restriction) levels again here, so I dare say we will see it all again.

Very unlikely that the Cape Town drought will break any time soon. The city is in a Winter rainfall region, so there's little chance of significant rains before May or June, and even then -- and assuming that rainfall returns to something resembling "normal" -- it will take several years for dams to fully restock. A single rainy season ain't gonna do it (unless there're some pretty catastrophic rains. ;)

Which is sad, and shows the reality of climate change.

In Joburg we've had a few "100 year" floods in a year, so much water pouring down that we're forgetting that we had a drought last year.

Very fair point, although I didn't imply that it might break this year. Whenever it breaks though, I hope the usage remains low, just in case such an event reccurs.

Doesn't it make total sense to mothball the desal when you don't need it?

Pity about water consumption though.

The desal plants need to be kept running (at least ticking over), otherwise it deteriorates to the point where large parts need to be replaced/fixed again where needed, afaik.

I may be wrong that the Gold Coast one is mothballed, but there were also issues about how it was funded, which means it's facing funding problems now when the drought is gone.

even though the dams are almost depleted the city's lack of water is more due to political issues than water management. the government is insisting that the local desalination plant manufacturer (which supplies australia and other countries) operate through a "Black Economic Empowerment" partner which heavily inflates the cost, and most likely will be tied to "the worlds most corrupt presidents" partners in crime, the Gupta family.

For those outside of SA, dam in this context means reservoir.

This is why this is happening. Everybody is quick to jump on the climate change bandwagon, but the government in ZA is VERY inefficient, incompetent and corrupt... to the point of making many other countries worst days look like competence. If the land reform goes through without compensation expect it to get a lot worse (which is being actively talked about by some of the parties). The compensated land reform has already been a disaster. Farms that were purchased and distributed went from being productive farms to producing nothing in many cases. This is all about mis-management. The Western Cape provincial government, which is where Cape Town is, is one of the more functional governments in the country too.

This has also led to an interesting social experiment based on a theory developed by the University of California (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272494414...) where household water consumption has been made public (https://citymaps.capetown.gov.za/waterviewer/) in order to apply social pressure on high users.

Cape Town also has this now, although the usage levels are very granular:

https://citymaps.capetown.gov.za/waterviewer/

The heaviest offenders have also had mandatory electronic limiters fitted to their properties, permitting no more than 350L per property per day (as of now)

The second link has been hugged to death or is down (it will get to the loading bars and stop there)

The init.js file is huge and I suspect they don't cache it server side. I wrote an alternative version which loads faster, but the interesting data (water usage) is obviously available only from the City of Cape Town's server and it delivers the map in one giant png file. At least the aerial map is now cached tiles from another server.

http://www.vwd.co.za/vwd/water

It's definitely a big problem, yet I see a lot of creative solutions which gives us a bit of hope for the future. People are also working together to keep water consumption at its lowest.

A lot of people are gathering rain water with big water tanks next to their houses. I've personally built a setup connected to the gutters of my roof, and it's amazing how much water you can gather like this.

It's also quite easy to keep your swimming pool topped up by simply getting a cover for it so that water does not evaporate.

However the occasional light rains won't do much to affect the big dams that supply drinking water to the wider population of Cape Town. There simply has been too little rain these past winters to fill the dams up to an adequate level.

I think the long term solutions for Cape Town will be increasing and improving the water catchment areas so the dams can cope with the population increase, possibly combined with desalination plants if it gets really bad.

A pool must use a lot of water - perhaps heavy taxation on [water for] pools would help in the future?

It's been illegal to use municipal water in pools for a few months now. Most municipal swimming pools are closed.

Before that (around March 2017), you were only allowed to do so if you had a 'pool blanket', which makes a huge difference.

(The little amount of rain we have received over the past few weeks is sufficient to keep the levels high enough in our pool to keep the water level above the weir, without having used other water)

Watch out for Waterseer. Not sure I trust that company after their ludicrous misjudgement in their first invention:

[Thunderfoot Video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVsqIjAeeXw)

[Lindybeige Video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zfYAXWODUs)

Side-note: I live in the Cape Town area. We got on international news! Yay us...?

Honestly, I'm pretty worried.

For visitors to CPT, it may not seem like a city that is undergoing a drought. Indeed, CPT still gets a fair bit of rain, if lower than previous years. The problem is we do not get rain in areas where our dams that provide drinking water are situated.

Here’s the link to the official “Day 0” page:

http://coct.co/water-dashboard/

The irony I've found is that when you cut water usage, the water company will INCREASE your fees because they're not making enough money. They tell us to save water, and then turn around and charge us more for using less, it's very angering.

Equally angering is when they set the conservation target as a percent of your previous usage.

I already conserve water, drought or not, because I'm cheap. When you tell me I'm not meeting my conservation targets because I can't go down another 20%, that infuriates me, especially since my usage is already 50% lower than my neighbors!

Governments should be aware that to produce 1 pound of beef you need 50000 liters of fresh water, and if they are aware, stop lying to the population. But yes, I guess you could try to save 40 liters per day with your oil urinal.

State subsidy of certain agriculture, particularly beef and dairy, is definitely one of the biggest crimes of our times.

That last paragraph, literally following the statement before it just makes me mad :

"But there is a sense that much of this technology is merely tinkering at the edges. The overarching issue is the potentially devastating effect of global warming on water availability and how we, collectively, endeavour to tackle it."

Unfortunately this statement is absurd. The real cause:

"Most recent projections suggest that its water could run out as early as March. The crisis has been caused by three years of very low rainfall, coupled with increasing consumption by a growing population."

So an extremely rare event is causing a water shortage. How has climate change affected this ? Well, it has moved the average of the distribution of rainfall by a few percent (at most).

How far are we from the average ? Close to 3 sigma away from it, and increasing every day. If the city actually runs out of water we'll be closer to 4 sigma before it happens.

So how much influence does climate change have on it. Opening my python client I feel like it can be distributed as such:

1) 99.99999% is a coincidence (a series of unrelated events spanning 4+ years causing a lack of rainfall in the area)

2) 0.00001% is climate change

In other words, if you solved climate change today, nothing at all would change for this city. And yet that claim from the BBC gets inserted there.

Cape Town has had some record high temperatures in recent years (1) along with the multi-year drought.

To what extent is this likely to be due to climate change?

http://www.traveller24.com/News/Alerts/sa-summer-heat-breaks...

http://ewn.co.za/2017/12/07/heatwave-brings-record-setting-t...

It's a scary situation. Cape Town is a very popular tourist destination and one wonders if that industry as a whole is managing to comply with the restrictions (thus adversely affecting business)

Devices like WaterSeer have been debunked a while ago by guys like Dave from EEVBlog. Basically the math behind them do not check out at all.

Does anyone got alternative views?

Amusing since Cape Town was founded by the Dutch as a place to resupply for the long voyage to the Spice Islands. Including clean drinking water.

Saying it's "ironic" would be somewhat harsh (but would still get the point across), saying it's "amusing" is just cruel. You know there's real people affected and the ones hurt will likely not be the ones responsible, right?

A bit of empathy would go a long way.

I always wondered why you can buy a lot of H2O filled fruits like grapes from South Africa in Europa. They must have some enourmous amounts of water if they can export it. Maybe the price of water isn’t high enough yet or can’t be paid?

South Africa is not a desert - http://www.grainsa.co.za/images/Articles/2012-08/reenval_fig...

And it’s bigger in area than any two European countries (excluding Russia) combined. Just because there’s a drought in one part of Spain __ there might be plenty of water somewhere in France.

My point is: if there’s a case to fly water (in form of grapes) to Europe, why would they not move water from one place in SA to another?

Cost?

Cost and lead time of infrastructure (and adequate planning).

Systems to do this exist in the country (eg, moving water from Lesotho to the Vaaldam with the Highlands water scheme), but that project was 15+ years in the making, and is still ongoing.

From what I can see, nothing like this was realistically expected for Cape Town, and thus never planned for.

why would they not move water from one place in SA to another

Not my area of expertise, but:

South Africa has some massive water transfer schemes: The Lesotho Highlands Water Project and others. The Western Cape Province and Cape Town are governed by the national opposition party (Democratic Alliance). It wouldn't surprise me if this led to a lack of coordination and plannning with the national government, if not outright neglect of the issue (along with general infrastructure-planning neglect between 1990-2005 or so).

No one's consuming liters of grapes every day to survive - it's a nice-to-have and not a staple. Transporting it in massive quantities (like enough to make a dent in how much Cape Town consumes every day) changes the equation somewhat, making it prohibitively expensive to do (compared to options like, hoping for rain). Of course, this also changes the equation if we do get to the point that many lives imminently depend on it - people don't riot to be first in line to get grapes.

It could bring in money that is needed to pay for moving other water across the country.

It could also be profitable to ship out water inside grapes and, at the same time, import an equivalent amount of water in barrels. See it as Europe shipping water to SA to be packed inside grapes.

More likely, though, that is because Europeans are willing/able to pay more for that grapes/water. In a capitalistic world, it is the poor who will feel water shortages most.

South African table grapes are mostly farmed in... (wait for it).. a desert, in the Northern Cape, but water is ample from the Orange River that runs through it. Cape Town is some distance from that area, though.

Surely Gaza ran out of water a long time ago ...

Just finished reading Affluence Without Abundance https://www.amazon.com/Affluence-Without-Abundance-Disappear... about bushmen who live in southern Africa.

It turns out people have lived in southern Africa for 200,000 years, hunting and gathering.

Westerners show up, run out of water in a couple hundred years, and call them "developing."

The book is an eye-opener.

Yes, but hunting and gathering in the bush doesn't do a damn about increasing technology and getting us off this planet. All it takes is one planetary scale disaster, and we're done for.

Actually from what I've read, hunter gatherers had 8+ hours of free time per day. They weren't constantly running in fear of predators as usually thought. There was plenty of time for invention if inclined.

We're spinning our tires aiming to expatriate from the planet in lieu of a planetary scale disaster. We are better equipped to fix our own damn rock in space than to fuck up another one.

The people you are speaking about, the Bushmen, were wiped out by the Nguni pastoralists and the European settlers. A few descendents remain. They are not in power here. As for Westerners... they haven't been in power for more than 20 years (if you call the Apartheid government western?). Infrastructural development has slowed down mostly due to graft. Secondly, we are talking about a tiny region of Southern Africa. The rest of it is mostly fine.

Turns out having the most guns doesn't make you the most enlightened.

Sanaa, the capital city of Yemen, has already run out of water. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-yemen-security-blockade-r...

There were serious problems before the war, but now it's just a disaster area. The US supports this.

The difference is, Cape Town is not in war time. I can't think of the last time there was literal war in Cape Town, there's nothing in recent times. My best guess would be "a small but significant military engagement" on 8 January 1806 (1).

Unrest in the late 1980s doesn't count.

As far as I know, there were no military engagements in Cape Town during the Anglo-Boer wars (1880 - 1881 and 1899 – 1902).

1 ) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blaauwberg

There was some action in World War 2 with shipping around the peninsula, but nothing in the city itself

Right. Nothing that would destroy the city's pipes or other infrastructure, and therefor ability to manage water, in that.

Yes, U-boats sank merchant shipping in Table Bay

> is not in war time

Maybe not physical destruction. But "war time" is something that will get decided by historians in 20 years time.

In a more cyber conscience world social engineering of the state[0] will become a act of war...

or something in that line, I hope.

gobble gobble

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gupta_family

I totally get that there is tension and conflict in the situation. Other comments allude to the tension between Local and national governments (1) and there may be an element that the National government is neglecting CT or actively wanting it to fail.

I don't think though this is the same as a city like Sanaa being shelled into rubble (2)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16176394

https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/inside-war-torn-yemens-capi...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoZsjagnKPs

Yemen was nearly running out of water even before the war started. In any case these are quibbles. Yemen and South Africa having cities without water should be a major alarm to all civic leaders.

It is not just the US. Canada in recent years signed a $15Bln contract to supply the Saudi Arabia rulers with weapons. (I was going to say 'government but 'rulers' feels more appropriate in this case).

Saudi Arabia is at war with Yemen and the war is causing the humanitarian crisis described in the above article.

Indeed, the UK position is "We'll support the Saudis in every practical way short of engaging in combat.":

https://www.caat.org.uk/campaigns/stop-arming-saudi/arms-sal...

Same for Italy, we tripled arms sales to them in the last two years and Parliament recently voted not to restrict the flow despite the conflict in Yemen.

The largest of the dams supplying Cape Town (Theewaterskloof) has a massive surface area (around 5000 ha). Given that the area also tends to be very windy due to its altitude and the prevailing South Easter that blows right throughout summer, evaporation must be really high. Also desalination is energy intensive.

For political reasons I'm pretty sure this would be impossible, but I wonder how practical it would be to cover it with solar panels and use the energy for desalination.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com