Tag: water

Dam good news

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Cape Town’s dam levels, so often the cause of local panic, have finally risen above the percentages from this time last year. And while last year wasn’t anything to write home about water level-wise, you have to start somewhere, and being almost 41 billion litres ahead of last June is a good place to begin.

Stat attack:
That weekly change of 5.7% represents an incredible increase of 51,200 Ml.
An average of more than 7 billion litres or 2800 Olympic sized swimming pools gained each day.

And with another two cold fronts quite literally just over the horizon, we could even be looking at exceeding the levels from this time in 2021, which would put us in the incredible position of having the highest June dam levels since 2014, when all that nastiness began.

Of course, much like electricity, the best time to save water is when you have water to save, so although a nice long hot shower might be just what you need right now, maybe think of the parched, dry summertime some way ahead, and just limit yourself to a couple of minutes for the greater good.

Or better still, just stand outside for 30 seconds on Wednesday evening. Your call.

Summer rains

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Good news for the farmers amongst us. Some (or more) good rain expected over the next two weeks.

I don’t want to ruin anyone’s summer, but we always knew that a bit of dampness was always going to be more likely this time around:

And I have no problem with some free water for the garden and the dams. We got a whole 1mm on Saturday, and 5mm the Tuesday before that. I’ve been doing some rudimentary calculations, and I make that 6mm over the last few days. Not bad, but we could always do with a bit more: Cape Town’s dam levels are down to 62% – nothing to panic about, but we’d obviously much rather that they were a bit higher.

That said, I’m still not quite prepared to give up on summer just yet, so if we can have some lovely hot days in between the forecasted showers, that will also be good.

Moon on a stick stuff, I know. But if you don’t ask, you don’t get.

Wet summer ahead

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I mean, it’s not going to rain all the time, but climatologists are predicting that it will be wetter than an average summer. And that’s no bad thing, given that Cape Town generally gets less than 100mm of rain between November 1st and March 31st each year. So a bit wetter than that shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

Wandile Sihlobo, Senior Lecturer Extraordinary at the Department of Agricultural Economics at Stellenbosch University describes the forecast as “comforting”:

And with our local dams also at a “comforting” 85.6% full, it’s all looking rather rosy.

Water-wise, at least.

Also, if the “comforting” rains could just hold off for the next week or so, I’d be really delighted. Please can someone organise that for us?

Thanks in advance.

Day 186 – Up the mountain

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The Boy Wonder is leading a hike up Table Mountain this weekend, and so we decided to do a quick recce in case there had been any changes since the last time he/we were up there.

Not much had changed since I was last up there except that the dams were a whole lot fuller.

Here’s proof:

The image on the left – showing 11 rungs going to the water level on the Woodhead Dam – was taken on the 24th of March last year. I took the one on the right this morning and the water level is above the third rung down. 18 months and 4 days change.

The overflows were hard at work:

It wasn’t raining while we were up there – it was all gorgeous and sunny – but we did get caught in an unforecasted and therefore unexpected downpour on the way down. A stark reminder that conditions can change very quickly on the mountain.

13km (and 650m of ascent) later, we dragged our soaking wet bodies into the car and headed home for hot drinks and showers.

It was a great way to spend a morning.

Day 165 – Hasn’t it been wet?

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Well, no. Not really.

Even though our dams are at a very healthy 95.6% of capacity…

… a far cry from the panic of literally running out of water not so very long ago, this has not been down to this being a particularly wet winter. In fact, this winter has been decidedly average.

graph from here

That’s the 8 months of 2020 so far in orange. Thankfully, not like 2011 (that’s the low line), but also definitely not like 2001 (that’s the very, very high line) either.

So yes, a few things like borehole augmentation, clearing of inflows and a reduction in alien vegetation around the dams will have helped, but it’s the fact that Capetonians are now using only just over half as much water each day as they used to which is making the biggest difference. We’re using just over 630 million litres per day, as opposed to the almost 1 billion litres per day prior to the nastiness of the drought in 2016-2018.

That’s a superb effort.

But…

One of the City’s methods of reducing water usage was to increase tariffs. This probably did have some effect, but now that the dams are nearly full for the first time in 6 years, isn’t it time to reduce those tariffs? The problem is that the City is selling much less water than it used to, while the efforts aimed at avoiding Day Zero two years ago were costly, and the plans to safeguard the city’s supply in a uncertain future doesn’t come for free.
Also, reduce the price of water and it stands to reason that consumption will go up again, which won’t help anyone, but might make up the shortfall in revenue.

Mayoral Committee Member for Water and Waste, Alderman Xanthea Limberg says:

Regarding tariffs: as previously stated, a reduction in tariffs will be dependent on an increase in consumption. Currently, the City is selling approximately 30% less water than before the drought, but is facing additional costs that come with increasing our resilience. It is important that the City cover its costs to ensure that the maintenance and augmentation programmes can be carried out. Should the amount of water we are selling significantly increase this will be factored into the tariffs, but given the uncertain impact of climate change it may not be wise to actively encourage such an approach at this stage.

So. Use less water so we don’t run out, but use more water so that it costs less, so that the City makes more money to make sure that they can replace the extra water you used because it was cheaper to use more water than when you were using less water.

 

Got it.