Day Zero standpipe ‘solution’ impractical

MUCH has been written about the water problems facing the City of Cape Town, but little is of practical value.

Day Zero looms on the near horizon, when water will cease to be supplied to households and, reportedly, some 200 standpipes will be made available for households to collect 25 litres per person/per day.

There is no reference to the logistics of such an exercise. Even with multiple feeders from each standpipe, the impossibility of the exercise should be apparent.

How do the elderly, the infirm, children and working people manage to collect their quota of water from standpipes each day?

Even the young and physically fit could not carry 25 litres any real distance. It seems the only workable solution is to have (as is the case with refuse collection) water trucks rolling through, area by area, to dispense water, but then the city probably does not have access to the number of tankers required.

A little further down the line, when the taps are dry, households will have to shut down their hot-water cylinders, the major part of electricity usage, to ensure we don’t have a Guy Fawkes night of exploding rooftops.

And then the council will face another revenue loss in electricity billings. Is the city contemplating an electricity billing/drought penalty, based on property valuation?

Is it also possible that Cape Town could set a new record by becoming the first major city in the world to face a no water crisis? Keith Hurworth Kenridge