Desalination plant on ice
Three temporary ones working, but good rains have delayed permanent project
PLANS to build a permanent desalination plant have been put on ice following the good rains.
Although the City’s three temporary desalination plants in Strandfontein, Monwabisi and at the V&A Waterfront have already come online, Deputy Mayor Ian Neilson said a permanent plant had not been “triggered yet”.
(The temporary plants) were part of the City’s drought emergency response. What our outlook document refers to is the consideration of permanent desalination as part of Cape Town’s water mix going into the future, along with other sources. A permanent desalination project has not yet been triggered.
“Dam levels, consumption levels and trends; the progress on groundwater abstraction projects and relative costs are some of the factors that will be considered,” Neilson said.
According to the latest Water Outlook Report, the procurement of a permanent desalination plant has not begun. The report states: “The project is in progress to enable water quality sampling over an extended period to feed into the site selection process for permanent desalination. While the immediate requirement to augment supply has not been agreed on, undertaking an updated feasibility study is seen as a no-regret endeavour.”
Asked if it was viable to go ahead with a permanent desalination plant now that dams are at around 74% full, Neilson said: “Longer-term planning and assessments are under way which will propose the way forward. Cape Town is a growing city and desalination offers a drought-proof water source; as such desalination is highly likely to form part of Cape Town’s future water mix. The City made a (financial) saving as it did not have to spend the money earmarked for all of the drought emergency programmes. The funds were raised through the reprioritisation of internal City funds.
Neilson said the key to Cape Town water resilience would lie in the diversification of water resources “to make Cape Town less dependent on rainfall as the primary source of potable water”.