Solution to water crisis floats up from the depths of a WC

Spare a thought for vultures. They are vilified creatures, associated with death and decay, and ugly, yet the environmental service they provide is invaluable. Without them, rotting carcasses will stink up the place and cause a resurgence of the miasma theory of disease.

Take tow-truck operators, scrap-metal dealers and marine salvagers. They are vultures all, but without them the freeways will be clogged with wrecks, the railways will become viable and a flotilla of Davy Jones lockers will wash up on Llandudno beach.

The thing about vultures is their keen eyesight: they can spot a dying thing many kilometres away, then they hang around ominously.

Marine salvage master Nick Sloane has spotted just such an opportunity. Capetonians are dying for a decent shower, so he offers them an iceberg, farfetched from Gough Island. There are some problems with the plan, such as the tendency of icebergs to explode. Another disappointing thing is that it would sit at some point over the horizon south of Cape Town, so it will be too far away to admire while it melts.

Still, Sloane’s thinking is inspirational. It has spawned other hare-brained schemes such as diverting water from the Gariep Dam via the Sunday’s River to be piped right past the Baviaanskloof where only old people remember rain, skirting the parched Langkloof and over the Outeniqua all the way to Theewaterskloof Dam to save Cape Town. It probably won’t wash, even if the engineering is no biggie: there will be trouble from farmers.

Then there’s drilling. Hefty blokes with suspicious-looking suntans squeeze in on either side of a member of the fourth estate on a cattle-class flight to Cape Town for a spot of perquisite. “Drilling boreholes is the new ploughing,” says one. “It doesn’t matter if you don’t hit water,” says the other. “You sink a hole and cash comes out.”

It might be that he had overheard water expert Mike Muller telling the Mail & Guardian that if you threw enough money at the problem, you could get what you want. Even so, pots of money won’t buy water if there isn’t any left underground, which is what will happen if the Capetonians don’t start uprooting alien invasive plants, say Jasper Slingsby and Mark Botha in a letter to the Daily Maverick.

This could include grape vines. Let that sink in.

But cash is king. Just ask the Department of Water and Sanitation, which has contracted drillers at a mere R400,000 a hole in Limpopo, though it inflates some to R2.4m for sundries. This Day Zero action cost taxpayers R2.2bn for the 2016-17 year, which is a lot even these days when rot no longer amounts to millions but billions.

But even that pales against the cost of desalination. Former water and sanitation minister Nomvula Mokonyane (now deployed to the department of spin) says Umgeni Water can do a V&A Waterfront desalination plant for R400m, which, accounting for the department’s way with sundries, will come to R2.4bn for a plant that will barely cover the flushing needs of a caravan park of Vaalies over Easter.

Now add the cost of the electricity SA does not have and the future is clear: keep the lights on in Gauteng, grant Capetonians secession and allow the peninsula to float away towards an iceberg field. The Cape is carrion, good only for vultures.

Speaking of things whiffy, a plumber spoke from the depths of a WC and said he couldn’t understand why Capetonians don’t syphon water from the Orange River upstream of Alexander Bay.

“What you do is brush aside the diamonds and sink a caisson into the river, so you won’t need a dam. Suck out the air and let the water rise above sea level, then pipe it at sea level to the Molteno reservoir. It is a shortcut, plus wherever you are, the Cape is downhill. You don’t need pumps. The motion of the ocean and one-way valves will do the job.”

“It can’t be done,” said the plumber. “The project will cost mere millions. Only billions get any attention these days.”