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<\/a><\/p>\nIt\u2019s an alarming development for a city that draws millions of tourists a year to its sandy beaches, iconic flat-topped Table Mountain and picturesque wine lands. Before he became president after the end of apartheid, Nelson Mandela was jailed on a small island just off its coast for 18 years and spent another nine years in its mainland prisons.<\/p>\n
In a bid to curb consumption, the city has banned residents from watering their gardens and washing their cars, shut most public swimming pools and cut the water pressure, causing intermittent outages in some high-lying areas and tall apartment buildings. The city\u2019s poor, who are wholly dependent on the municipal supply and have limited space to store water, have been the hardest hit.<\/p>\n
Patricia Gxothelwa, 34, an unemployed resident of Imizamo Yethu township, about 12 kilometers south of the city center, has to use a bucket to collect water from communal taps a short walk away when the supply is cut off from the hillside shack she shares with her husband and four children. It\u2019s an increasingly regular occurrence.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes they cut our water off for two or three hours,\u201d Gxothelwa said as she gestured toward her single inlet pipe. \u201cIt\u2019s more than before, once or twice a week. Water is one of our biggest problems.\u201d<\/p>\n
Three straight years of poor rains typically occur less than once in a millennium, according to University of Cape Town climatologists Piotr Wolski, Bruce Hewitson and Chris Jack. It\u2019s unclear what\u2019s caused such extreme drought, though climate change is a possible factor and the city should brace itself for a recurrence, they said in a study published Oct. 6.<\/p>\n
A 50% increase in Cape Town\u2019s population over the past decade has added to the pressure on the water supply. The city has drawn new residents from the Johannesburg-Pretoria area, drawn by the slower-pace seaside lifestyle, and from the neighboring Eastern Cape region, where there are fewer job opportunities.<\/p>\n
Also hindering efforts to respond to the crisis: A lack of coordination and cooperation between the African National Congress-controlled national government on the one hand and the city and surrounding Western Cape province, run by the main opposition Democratic Alliance, on the other. Appeals to have the entire Western Cape declared a disaster zone went unheeded for months and the national water department, which is responsible for bulk supply, has exhausted its budget, according to Helen Zille, the provincial premier.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe city responded quite belatedly to some of the signals for various reasons, some of which may be not wanting to lose voter confidence, delays with tendering processes and not wanting to invest in projects unnecessarily,\u201d said Martine Visser, a professor and behavioral economist at the University of Cape Town who\u2019s been advising the city. \u201cBut when you look at the drop in consumption, particularly among high-income households, then I think they have been quite successful.\u201d<\/p>\n While average daily consumption has plummeted to about 600 million liters of water a day from 1.1 billion liters a year ago, about half of households still aren\u2019t adhering to the city\u2019s usage targets. About 19,000 homes that have regularly exceeded their recommended quotas have had mandatory devices fitted to their inlet pipes that restrict them to 350 liters a day.<\/p>\n Besides trying to curb usage, the city is also rushing to augment water supply from the rain-fed dams by tapping underground aquifers, springs and boreholes, and is fast-tracking plans to build several desalination plants.<\/p>\n De Lille says she\u2019s is confident the city can avoid Day Zero, which will occur if dam levels hit 13.5% (they are currently at about 35%, down from 53% a year ago and 92%in 2014). But contingency plans are being put in place for that eventuality. They include distributing drinking water at 200 collection points, guarded by the police and army, and rationing residents to 25 liters each.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t want to underestimate how catastrophic Day Zero could be,\u201d said Clem Sunter, an independent scenario planner who has also been advising the city. \u201cIt would require thousands of tankers to provide a minimal level of water to each person. You would have to think of temporarily evacuating people.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n
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