All responsible for saving water

THE rain that fell on Monday afternoon and for part of the day yesterday brought welcome relief to a thoroughly parched city.

But, as grateful as we are for every drop, we are still not out of the woods when it comes to building up sufficient water reserves and breaking the back of a crippling drought.

Punitive water restrictions are still in place and this is likely to be the case for quite some time. Worse, a further tariff hike is coming should Bay residents not reduce their usage by 15% by the end of the month.

Infrastructure, engineering and energy political head Annette Lovemore said in a report in The Herald yesterday that, while the metro had done relatively well in reducing consumption, this was still not enough to achieve the target of 270 million litres a day.

Many scoff at the measures in the belief it is little more than a moneymaking scheme dreamt up by our new city bosses.

But in the meantime our dams are getting emptier by the day and the hottest month is still ahead of us.

Unfortunately some residents – and we are not talking about the poor here – feel feathers about our precarious water situation, for instance by blithely filling their pools on the sly.

Others fortunate enough to have boreholes are capitalising on this by selling the water for a fee, which is illegal – and for good reason.

Even if you think you are taking reasonable steps to save water, there is still much you can do. For instance, people with pools can backwash into a tank, then filter the water back into the pool once it has settled instead of pouring thousands of litres down the drain.

And by flushing the toilet only when absolutely necessary, an average-sized household can save more than 100 litres of water a day. Diverting runoff from your gutters into a tank is another simple but very effective measure.

Make it your mission this year to save more water. We all need to take responsibility for our water resources and how we manage them.