The battle facing small business
Business has to adapt quickly to the new normal of scarce water
● Baristas and gourmet sandwich chefs at Cape Town’s most popular weekend meetup spot, the Neighbourgoods Market, will have to supply their own water when Day Zero arrives.
The market operates on Saturdays at the Old Biscuit Mill in Woodstock, which is managed by Indigo Properties.
Group MD Adrian van Deventer said a plan was in place to cope with taps running dry, as they are expected to do in April.
“The Old Biscuit Mill will be business as usual. We will have sufficient water to be able to flush the toilets,” Van Deventer said. “We’re investigating the best source [of nonpotable water] but we’ve put the necessary infrastructure in place.”
The City of Cape Town will continue to supply water to central business nodes after Day Zero, but The Old Biscuit Mill and other small businesses outside these nodes will bear the brunt of the crisis.
Functioning toilets appear to be all that Indigo can offer its Old Biscuit Mill tenants. Some of the restaurants in the Woodstock complex have installed water-storage tanks.
Windows and floors at the Old Biscuit Mill are not being cleaned as part of efforts across the city to cut water consumption and push back Day Zero, when piped water to most of the city’s four million people will stop. Capetonians will need to fetch water — up to 25 litres per person per day — from central collection points.
The Old Biscuit Mill has switched off its urinals, placed bottles in toilet cisterns to reduce the amount of water used for flushing, fixed aerators on taps and installed handsanitiser dispensers where taps have already been disconnected.
In a note this week, ratings agency Moody’s said the water crisis was credit negative for Cape Town — reduced consumption has cut the city’s revenue from water sharply.
“Two of Cape Town’s main industries, tourism and agriculture, are likely to decline, reducing employment, gross value added and tax income,” Moody’s said.
“Other effects include threats to public health from poor sanitation and, more generally, to social order, which is significant given Cape Town’s marked income inequality.”
Hairdressers, laundromats, car washes and other water-reliant businesses in suburban Cape Town are scrambling to find alternative water sources.
Some small businesses may find it is time to diversify into less water-intensive services and products, said Winda Austin-Loeve, president of the Small Business Institute.
“The positive in all of this is that small businesses will now know how to utilise natural resources in a more effective way,” she said.
“Even if it rains it’s not something small business should forget, even in other parts of the country. A natural disaster can strike, if you look at climate change, any year and in any region.”
Not only the Western Cape is suffering in the drought; water levels in dams in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal are also dangerously low.
Doug Parker, director of the California Institute for Water Resources at the University of California, said more frequent and severe droughts are becoming increasingly prevalent in Mediterranean-type climates, such as Cape Town’s. When the rain did come, storms would also be more destructive.
Barcelona, in 2008, and São Paulo, in 2015, have also come perilously close to running out of water.
Parker said climate change was only part of the problem.
“Droughts are slow-moving catastrophes that often don’t get the policy attention they deserve,” he said.
“Water conservation and value are important. A lot of water is lost through inefficient infrastructure. We need policy that invests in conservation, desalination, alternative supplies and water reuse. The more sources we have, the more resilient we are.”
Parker believes global spending on water infrastructure is inadequate.
“Demand management is about all you are left with when things reach this stage. You can look at temporary ways to import water, but they are almost always inadequate,” he said.
“We must build a water ethic that keeps us conserving and using water wisely at all times. Then we need an additional set of plans to adapt to severe drought.”
In Cape Town residents and businesses are taking matters into their own hands with soft infrastructure investment.
Evergreen Retirement Holdings plans to spend around R750 000 on each of its four villages in Cape Town to implement its Day Zero action plan.
When Day Zero arrives Amdec will be able to supply treated borehole water, safe for drinking, directly to the taps of its 600 elderly residents.
“We will stick to the 25-litre allowance per person per day, which means we will need to have a minimum of 30 000 litres of potable water stored at one village on any given day,” said Cobus Bedeker, development director at Evergreen.
If its expensive treatment and storage system fails, Evergreen will buy water in bulk. The municipality will also deliver the 25litre daily allowance for each resident, as it will to all old-age homes.
Evergreen is rethinking new developments, with an emphasis on water-neutral construction. Treated effluent water is used on its sites and cement arrives already mixed.
“Water-wise construction methodology is already used in the UK, US and China. It’s a more efficient way of building and reduces delivery time,” said Bedeker.
The likelihood of a water-scarce future is prompting entrepreneurs to develop new solutions.
An example is DryBath, a cleansing gel that removes dirt and body odour. The man behind it, Ludwick Marishane, said he created the product because he was tired of bathing from a bucket where he grew up in rural Limpopo.
But the drought has provided an opportunity to launch his product to a wider market.
“A lot of people who have buying power are going after the product,” he said. “We hope to get the economies of scale to get our production costs down.”
Cape Town’s tourism and agriculture are likely to decline
Droughts are slow-moving catastrophes Doug Parker Director of the California Institute for Water Resources