Poor management, planning brought on Cape water crisis
DEAR Cape Town Municipality,
A lot is being said about this water crises.
As much as the climate change has most certainly a negative effect, I am afraid that poor water management and lack of planning has a large role to play. For the past seven years, we’ve seen a huge increase in the volumes of tourists visiting Cape Town.
A large number of hotels have been built. What about the housing projects for underprivileged communities? Electricity, sanitation and water had to be provided. All of this implies greater resource management, and that includes water.
Too little was done much too late, and we are running a lost battle. Again, the biggest losers are the end users, with much repression (fines, clamping, rates increase).
Nothing much was done in educating the communities, since far too many still believe that water comes from a tap. Worse, if I am making use of water elsewhere, it’s fine, as I am not paying for it. It’s your water, it’s my water, it’s our water! Taxing, fining, charging isn’t going to bring water, it just shows the ineptitude at finding constructive measures.
What about educating the people not to spoil our rivers, that could enable us to create collecting points in some of our streams that run steadily day and night? Some industries are still discharging their pollutants in them. This should be addressed as a matter of urgency, and yes, heavy fines must be enforced.
We are fortunate to have a vast country with inversed rainy seasons between the north and the south for instance. Instead of drilling and pumping from our ancient precious aquifer, which will have greater collateral damages in future, why not build a huge water pipeline between Johannesburg and Cape Town? In winter, we could pump up our excess of water (if any), and vice versa in summer. Too costly? We did it for petrol arriving by boats in Cape Town and pumped to Johannesburg. When there’s a will, there’s a way!
Desalination plants. Well, no one can predict the long term effects of the mud saturated in salt being thrown back into the sea, but if what I heard is true, the cheapest quote we got so far, is R8/Lt.
At 600ml/day, over a 10 year contract, it would cost us not less than R35 trillion. Yes, 35 followed by 12 zeros Mr Zuma!
That could be a start to work on a budget for a water pipeline. Besides it would create a huge job opportunity with a sustainable project. I dare you to look into this!
Finally, I believe a lot of other countries/regions in the world are facing the same issue, some of them with years of experience.
How about creating urgently a world convention around water with all those countries/regions (California, Australia, Israel, Saudi Arabia, etc…) This would be proactive.
Charging the same people more and more all the time is so easy, it hasn’t changed since the Middle Ages, so why change anything? Best regards. Yves Upper Rosebank