Water solutions based on science, creativity

SOMETIMES it is necessary to state clearly simple things. Such is the case with the fresh water crisis that threatens the citizens of our second greatest city, Cape Town.

As the South African leader of the international movement of the American physical economist and statesman, Lyndon LaRouche, let me say it loud and clear: no matter the circumstance which has brought us to this point, it is totally unacceptable to let the crisis go on to the point that Cape Town’s water pipes are depressurised by turning off the taps, or by running dry – on May 11 or on any date.

Turn off the taps and the waterborne sewage system will back up. You can’t flush! In a city, that means cholera. Depressurising the freshwater pipes permits in-leaking of water-borne, disease-causing organisms, and again, people will die, mainly from diarrhoeal diseases. Depressurising and repressurising the pipes causes main breaks, especially in older pipes. For water engineers and public health experts, this is standard, textbook stuff.

The people of Cape Town are the victims of short-term, wishful thinking, when what has been needed all along is to work from a long-term plan based on science and human creativity, to solve eminently solvable problems.

Let us learn, now, this important lesson.

I, and the international movement I represent in South Africa, stand ready to help in this process.