The Gold Coast Bulletin

Salvage expert wants South Africa to go with flow over iceberg water solution

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ICEBERGS from Antarctica could be towed more than 7200km to South Africa to solve a crippling drought declared a national disaster.

Huge chunks of frozen freshwater at least 200m thick could be wrapped in a fabric ‘sling’ and ferried by tanker to Cape Town – at the centre of the worst water shortage for a century.

Once at the mainland, the ice would be chopped into a slurry and then melted down into millions of litres of drinking water.

Salvage expert Nick Sloane has floated the idea and is now trying to convince government officials to spend $171.8 million on the project.

“We want to show that if there is no other source to solve the water crisis, we have another idea no one else has thought of yet,” he said.

Mr Sloane, whose firm Resolve Marine led the refloating of the capsized Italian passenger liner Costa Concordia in 2014, said a single iceberg could produce about 150 million litres per day for about a year – around 30 per cent of the city’s needs.

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