Capetonians still way off water-saving target

Cape Town - Capetonians missed their goal of lowering their collective water usage to 500 million litres a day, by a whopping 113 million litres in the past week, a city official said on Monday.

"The city requires all water users to use less than 87l of water per person per day in total, irrespective of whether they are at home, work or elsewhere," said Xanthea Limberg, mayoral committee member for informal settlements, waste and water, and energy.

The Level 4b water use restrictions were intended to ensure the city did not completely run dry. Municipal water can only be used for essential washing, cooking and drinking.

The latest rainfall figures for the province had been promising, but were still way below previous averages, as the table below shows.

'Water warriors'

Limberg paid tribute to the "water warriors" who have been saving as much as they could, unlike those who were not.

"We must save water while we still have it. We are expecting a tough summer ahead."

This meant no nice long, hot baths while listening to the rain outside, or sneaky car washes.

"We must ensure that dam levels recover, so when it starts to rain, consumers should not revert back to using water wastefully," Anton Bredell, the province's local government, environmental affairs and development planning MEC said earlier on Monday.

The latest average water level for dams only went up by one percentage point in the past week, to 26.4%.

The usable water was about 10% less than a dam's levels. This was still far off the target of having dams at an average 75% full by the end of October.

By this time in 2016, the average level of dams was 46% full for the province, said Bredell.