Plug leaks to fix Bay water crisis

WATER is still a hot topic in South Africa and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.

The pressure to find innovative ways not only to actively use less of it but also to prevent it from being wasted has never been greater.

The city of Cape Town, though largely responsible for having created its own water crisis, has achieved significant gains in recent months in educating residents about responsible water usage while also going on an all-out offensive against leaks.

Contrast that to what has been happening in the Bay and there is cause for concern.

We have established that, had the municipal powers-that-be fixed every leak since 2010, when we experienced our last significant drought, this city’s five supply dams would now theoretically be overflowing.

To put it another way, all of the water lost here due to ailing infrastructure since 2010 would have been enough to fill every one of our big supply dams.

We are talking more than 300 billion litres of water lost in that period – an alarming figure whichever way you look at it, but downright sickening when you consider our dams’ overall capacity is still sitting at a frightening 22.3%.

The Herald visited several areas across the metro this weekend where leaks were once again evident; this paper gets reports every week from readers complaining about new leaks as well as older ones that have sprung up again.

It is a no-brainer that the easiest way to alleviate the water crisis would be to stop these leaks.

Residents are getting tired of the same excuses.

And constantly being urged by the municipality to “do their bit” to save water will certainly begin to wear thin once residents wise up to the fact that what they are supposedly wasting isn’t a patch on what is seeping away as a result of leaking pipes.