Water can run out

ON February 13, dam levels dropped to effectively 26.2%. The last 10% of a dam’s water will be undrinkable. The city claims that if we reduce the consumption to 700 million litres of collective use a day, we could be looking at 135 days (19.4 weeks) of useable water left.

To achieve the city’s overall target that enables us to have water until the end of June, the dams’ water loss needs to be no more than -1.37% a week on average.

On Monday, February 20, the water level has reduced further to 24.5%, a reduction of -1.7%.

Let’s get real folk: 26.2% of water divided by -1,37% of weekly loss will ensure we have 19 weeks of water: the “promised” 135 days. But if we continue to consume that 26.2% of water at a weekly loss of -1.7%, we will only have 15 weeks of water security and the water runs out at the start of June. That’s not all that far away.

You think running out of water won’t happen? Look at the statistics of dam water loss in 2015 for the same period we are facing this year. The dams lost about 30% in four months but the residents were lucky – their January dam water levels were also about 30% higher than ours, so they had a safety cushion.

Our safety cushion is to do everything we can to reduce our water consumption even further.

(Note: Possible rainfall has not been factored into the above calculations.)