Cape Town Turns to Desalination Plants to Ease Water Woes

The City of Cape Town is urgently seeking alternate means of water sources as its water supply is close to being completely depleted.

Some of the city’s solutions lie with pumping water from the Table Mountain Group aquifer and the establishment of desalination plants.

The city plans to have these plants operational by August, and intends for them to produce up to 500 million litres of water per day.

Kevin Balfour, head of the infrastructure in the city council’s water and sanitation department, said: “The city will require these reverse osmosis plants to be operational for at least six months, but might require them to remain in production for … one year or possibly even two years.”

The city requested ideas and information by 10 July to all interested and knowledgeable stakeholders who may be of assistance in supplying, installing and operating temporary reverse osmosis plants at various locations along the city’s coastline and inland.

While level 4 water restrictions remain in place in Cape Town, Xanthea Limberg, mayco member for utilities said restrictions could be extended beyond August should the situation not ease in the coming months.

Water levels

The Department of Water and Sanitation has reiterated that everyone reduce their water consumption as national dam levels continue to decline.

As of last week, provincial dam levels took an overall drop.

There has been a falloff in average dam levels across most provinces. The Algoa system, which consists of five dams serving Nelson Mandela Bay was at 35.7% last week, 0.7% down from the previous week.

Read more: Infrastructure News