City’s ‘water tax’ laughable

IN A comical sequel to our water crisis, mayor Patricia de Lille has suggested a special “water tax” to augment the City’s coffers (#WaterCrisis: Special water tax to punish savings? – Cape Argus, November 17).

It is common cause that the DA administration has been aware of this imminent water crisis for several years now, but has failed to prepare for it.

On June 14, 2013, IOL reported that Caron von Zeil, of Newlands, worked on the Reclaim Camissa project that documented millions of litres of fresh mountain water that flows to waste underneath Cape Town. Von Zeil’s archive research showed that historically, there were 36 springs in the City Bowl. Although she has uncovered 25 springs and four underground rivers, the City only has 13 springs on their records.

She has been trying to get the City council to endorse her project for several years, but has been ignored. Von Zeil then asked the City to lease land in Oranjezicht to her for her project, but the City then gave the land to another organisation. Bizarrely, a vegetable garden has since been established on this land that has access to 4 000 litres of free water a day. In a Cape Argus article (#WaterCrisis: Leaking pipes lead to huge water waste – August 29), the City also acknowledged that it had many leaking pipes and that it was fixing the infrastructure.

De Lille is completely out of her depth, and her grandiose plan to further milk ratepayers should be seen in the context of the DA’s recent humiliation in the Constitutional Court. The City had sought to review its own decision in terms of which Aurecon was awarded a tender for the decommissioning of the Athlone Power Station.

This loss resulted in a unanimous decision against the City, and ratepayers had to fork out millions of rand in fees for the advocates the City used, as well as the wasted costs for the Aurecon legal team. If the City requires funds for a water crisis of its own doing, these can be obtained from the salaries of the DA councillors who blindly supported De Lille all the way to the court.