Will Cape Town be the First City To Run Out of Water? (bbc.com) 342
Cape Town, home to Table Mountain, African penguins, sunshine and sea, is a world-renowned tourist destination. But soon it could also become famous for being the first major city in the world to run out of water. From a report: Most recent projections suggest that its water could run out as early as March. The crisis has been caused by three years of very low rainfall, coupled with increasing consumption by a growing population. The local government is racing to address the situation, with desalination plants to make sea water drinkable, groundwater collection projects, and water recycling programmes. Meanwhile Cape Town's four million residents are being urged to conserve water and use no more than 87 litres (19 gallons) a day. Car washing and filling up swimming pools has been banned.
Solution (Score:4, Funny)
The obvious solution is to just drink beer.
Re:Solution (Score:5, Funny)
The obvious solution is to just drink beer.
It hasn't rained beer in many years in Cape Town either. The last time beer-rain was suspected it turned out to just be someone peeing from a second floor window.
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As someone who's been to South Africa, I can pretty much guarantee that it was Castle lager and not Budweiser.
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Drink imported beer, it adds water to the local ecology
Last time I was there (Score:2)
they were surrounded with it. Amazing what can happen in a few short years.
Obvious solution: Raise the price of water. (Score:2, Insightful)
If you are going to run out of water in 3 months at the current rate and you don't have the time or money to build desalination
plants fast enough then the obvious solution is to raise the price of water so that you have the time/money to fix the problem.
With the time gained from reduced consumption and the money gained from charging more for the water, this is an easily
solvable problem for a city that sits on the ocean with an unlimited supply of water they can desalinate.
There are also desalination plants
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How very Marie Antoinette of you - "Let them eat cake!"
Raising the price of water doesn't reduce the need for water to live.
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How very Marie Antoinette of you - "Let them eat cake!"
Raising the price of water doesn't reduce the need for water to live.
You don't need 19 gallons per person a day to survive. You need less than 1 gallon per day per person of drinking water. If water is going to run out in 3 months then limited everyone to 1 gallon per day gives you almost 5 years to bring more desalination plants online and/or relocate some of the people.
The point is that you don't want to run out of water because then you have death by dehydration, mass riots, and chaos. If you really are going to run out of water in 3 months then you better come up with
Re: Obvious solution: Raise the price of water. (Score:2)
Without showering, diseases will spread like hell. You need 19 gallons. One gallon to drink, the rest for showering, and keeping a clean house. What good is a tank of saved water if the plague gets you?
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Make the first 19 gallons per person free or very low cost to give everyone enough water for their daily drinking and sanitation needs. Then price each additional gallon at whatever rate will stabilize reservoir levels: when levels are low, raise the price, and when levels are high, lower the price. Check the reservoir levels and re-price the water every few months to avoid overcharging water customers while preventing the water from running out. As new desalination plants and other sources of potable water
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Yours is an all too-common error in reasoning - comparison to a nonexistent alternative [wikipedia.org]. The alternative here isn't everyone has water to drink for as long as they want as you erroneously assume. The alternative here is they run out of water in 3 months, at which point people start dying of thirst. If raising the price of water can stave off that scenario, then it's an improvement. If you can't of
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Lets say you have a city with 1 million people, your current water sources can supply 3 million people, the population doubles every 5 years, and it takes 10 years to plan and construct a desalination plant that can supply water to 1 million people.
Temporary barges and free market solutions will not be able to cope with the realities of exponential growth. By the time the market signals there is more demand for water, its already too late.
Sure it can. The human population doesn't reproduce that fast. Those people are coming from some where. If the water becomes too scarce or too expensive then the people will stop coming and/or move to where they can get water. What you don't want to happen is for the water to stop then people don't have time to make the necessary move but if the price of water is also increasing exponentially and doubling every month then that will naturally cause the population to stop increasing exponentially. Even
Re: Obvious solution: Raise the price of water. (Score:2)
You boil the water in an enclosure or over a sheet of metal or glass and collect the condensate as it drips â" that should be obvious. Anyway, there are much cheaper and better ways to desalinate water though. For african villagers i bet the cheapest to setup/make is a solar still .. you just need some clear plastic and a cup (and the sun). Thats if they dont want to pool money together to buy or maintain a reverse osmosis system which btw is cheap nowadays even for household use. We have a system lik
No. Prices Can Go Up (Score:2)
They may be the first city in the world to have water prices be 100% market driven, and those that cannot afford the price may either die from thirst or move. There will be water to be had, but almost certainly not at the current prices.
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overpopulation. why isn't it ever talked about as the ROOT reason? i feel like the market should take externalities like that more into account. perhaps it will soon with resource scarcity.
frankly I am glad Trump (whom I despise) dumped on Africa. the population is exploding while their gov'ts are corrupt and it will result in misery for many, with numbers increasing rapidly. Too much human misery and environmental degradation that will cost us all. The USA is so stupid about birth control not only should w
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Did you know the human body is 60% water? *cocks gun* So please lie down the the bathtub first, I don't want to spill more than necessary...
Population Growth (Score:5, Insightful)
South Africa is divided into provinces. Cape Town is in the Western Cape province and was the first major city run by the national opposition party, the Democratic Alliance. The province itself followed, and is also governed by the DA, for some years now.
The national government and all other major cities, towns and provinces have been run by the national ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), since freedom.
So you may assume that the DA has screwed up, letting the city and province run out of water, while the ANC has got things sorted elsewhere? Well, you would be wrong.
The neighboring Eastern Cape province is an overwhelming majority ANC stronghold. But by every measure it is a dismal failure - jobs, healthcare, life expectancy, education, housing, infrastructure, etc.
So people in the Eastern Cape vote for the ANC, but their feet vote to take them to the Western Cape, and in particular, Cape Town. There their kids will be educated, there is economic growth, jobs, housing and things generally work - not a paradise, but much better from their perspective.
This inrush of millions of peasants has overwhelmed the Cape Town infrastructure and ability to provide for them. The city and the province and trying hard, but even the DA is not perfect.
One final observation: Water supply is constitutionally a national responsibility, not local or provincial. Hence parliament and the national executive must account. And national government is firmly in the hands of the ANC.
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So there really is no hope here: the influx of ANC voters will push out the DA and ruin the Western Cape as well. You could read a thousand MSM stories about this and never learn what you have explained.
Car washes (Score:2)
I see they placed a ban on washing cars, but I thought almost all of the commercial car washes recycled their water already? Unless you're only banning people washing them at home using a hose -- this doesn't seem like it will accomplish much?
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They recycle water, but not infinitely. There's still a large amount of water use, so it still makes sense to ban it as it's not an essential function, and it will save water.
Southern California (Score:2)
I believe Southern California (LA, San Diego) never had enough water. They get their water piped in from Colorado.
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Nuclear Powered Desalination Barges (Score:2)
2. Tow them to wherever there's a drought.
3. Profit?
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Could work, but they'll need a system to safely handle the waste brine, or it could also be a nuclear-powered aquatic life destroyer.
Short answer: no (Score:4, Interesting)
With nearly 300 comments already, I'm not sure there's a point in posting, but...
Los Angeles ran out of water decades ago. Or they would have if they hadn't built aqueducts to bring water from Mono Lake and the Colorado River.
Santa Barbara nearly ran out of water. They started to build a desalinization plant. Then one rain storm refilled their primary source of water. They cancelled the plant and sold the equipment to one of the dunes countries IIRC.
The real question should be why did Cape Town wait so long to start dealing with it?
Re:Non story (Score:5, Informative)
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It's a lot easier to deal with smaller populations, especially when that infrastructure has already been built and adjusted to meet the needs of population over time. Setting up new desalination plants to support millions of people is a logistical nightmare even if you have a highly competent team tackling the problem.
While what you say is true; this only makes Cape Town look like architects of their own peril. They could have started building desalination plants, or working on viable alternatives long ago before it was crunch time.
Of course, the same could be said about California and parts of Nevada. They're not doing enough, quick-enough and what happens in Cape Town could be a model for what is inevitably going to hit California eventually if they don't start working on better solutions.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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You should probably check the water supply there first, and see if they're actually using aquifers that are about to run out and turn the middle part of the country into a giant desert.
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Desalination is a problem for large-scale use; it's highly energy intensive, and you're left with hypersaline brine, which is environmentally destructive.
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I don't know much about desalination, but why can't the salt be extracted from the brine?
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Desalination is a problem for large-scale use; it's highly energy intensive, and you're left with hypersaline brine, which is environmentally destructive.
Every thing has problems in large-scale use. Proper planning and engineering can manage and solve problems though.
Highly-energy intensive, compared to what? Current technology can turn seawater into fresh water with 2.5 kwh per cubic meter. A typical desktop PC can consume 125 watts average power consumption, so less than a day of the PC sitting there turned on can provide a cubic meter (264 gallons).
The brine output does need to be managed properly, and it is possible to do it badly - but it is also possib
Energy intensity (Score:2)
Highly-energy intensive, compared to what?
Compared to pretty much every other commonly used method of getting fresh water. Hard to compete with simply pumping it from a freshwater lake/river or from an aquifer for cost. Even aqueducts and reservoirs take a lot less energy to manage.
A typical desktop PC can consume 125 watts average power consumption, so less than a day of the PC sitting there turned on can provide a cubic meter (264 gallons).
Apples to oranges my friend. Pumping ground water takes FAR less energy.
Acute versus long term problems (Score:2)
Desalination is a problem for large-scale use; it's highly energy intensive, and you're left with hypersaline brine, which is environmentally destructive.
All true though running out of water is a rather more acute problem than energy use or toxic byproducts.
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Trading arsenic for cyanide isn't really an improvement, you know.
Re:Non story (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, California has fared reasonably well, and has a sustainable approach to water management in general. There are some things that still need to change, and much that needs to be hardened and reformed, but they are on their way to it. California's biggest water risk is really an earthquake damaging the aqueducts, pipelines, and reservoirs.
Desalinization is a last-resort for a seaside city. It is much more efficient to trade resources with a water-rich area to serve a water-poor area than it is to run desalinization. Ultimately, to make desal not kill the local environment you need zero brine discharge which requires huge evaporation ponds. If done right, this could help to add humidity and manage the problem longer term, but you end up with about 100 tons of waste salts per million gallons of sea water.
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It takes several miles of distribution pipe and very low recovery rates to not be a problem after 100m from the pipe. You can mix with gray water to improve things... but that just wastes gray water. You also have all the anti-fouling chemicals to contend with b
Re:Non story (Score:5, Interesting)
They're not doing enough, quick-enough and what happens in Cape Town could be a model for what is inevitably going to hit California eventually if they don't start working on better solutions.
Some areas of California (Santa Barbara), which depend on local water supplies (like Cape Town) have faced this problem before (SB built a desalinization plant in the 1970s). Localities that depended on local ground water supplies have been hit by the drought, and required alternate supplies. But California is a big state. Scattered local problems do not add up to a general problem for California
In general California was plenty of water for its cities and towns, which only use 20% of the available water but produce 98% of its GDP. Agriculture, that use 80% of the water supplies only 2% of the GDP. So simply paying off farmers not to grow something can supply all of the urban water California will ever need.
The number one agricultural user of water (22% of all agricultural water usage) is a crop - alfalfa - that provides so little value that it often costs more to deliver the water than the alfalfa crop is worth (and 2/3 of that crop is simply exported to Asia), ancient water rights from the 19th century are the reason for this subsidy. Paying off all the alfalfa growers not to grow anything would only cost 0.1% of the state's GDP and double the amount of water available to the cities.
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Re:Non story (Score:5, Insightful)
California sends half its fresh water [ppic.org] directly out to the ocean without use other than scenic rivers and other environmental desires (like delta smelt) . Agriculture is second place, at 40%, and urban is about 10%. Reduce the scenic rivers demand, and we'd have plenty of fresh water.
Except that pretty much completely wrong. The outflow from the rivers keeps saltwater from intruding into ground water and pumping stations [sacbee.com]:
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just build a cross continent water grid and suck it out of the great lakes
This has been proposed before. It would be extremely expensive... but probably worthwhile. Water may not be the most expensive commodity, but it is the most valuable. Access to safe water is probably the most important thing any country can do. With climate change and shifting patterns in local climates across the country a trans continental water pipe, won't just provide for states like California that consume more than is produced there; it will act as a safety net for the much of the country.
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So, don't be responsible, because you can just take water from someone else?
Yea, I can imagine how well that would work out.
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While what you say is true; this only makes Cape Town look like architects of their own peril. They could have started building desalination plants, or working on viable alternatives long ago before it was crunch time.
To some degree this is true of just about everything and everyone though. There's all manner of things you or I could and probably should be doing today to make a better future for ourselves by anticipating problems we're likely to face and taking steps to solve them now and to some degree we likely do things like this such as investing for retirement, etc. The problem is that this particular problem is outside of the scope of any one individual.
You can blame it on governments (and by extension the peopl
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Plenty of Caribbean islands get water solely through desalination. The ABC islands come to mind
Dubai. Israel. Desalination is a solved problem.
South Africa is going through rough times - serious economic and social stresses, the sort of racial tensions the progressives imagine exist in America.
It's a solved problem, but desalination is also somewhat expensive - tough for SA in its current economic climate.
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Dubai. Israel. Desalination is a solved problem.
Not [independent.co.uk] really [israelnationalnews.com], no.
South Africa is going through rough times - serious economic and social stresses, the sort of racial tensions the progressives imagine exist in America.
If you want to talk about America, instead of uselessly lambasting progressives over a strawman, why not bring up examples like Flint, Michigan, CopperHill, Tennesse, or Jackson, Missippi? Or Georgia's perennial struggles to claim its alleged water rights from bordering states?
It's a solved problem, but desalination is also somewhat expensive - tough for SA in its current economic climate.
So in other words, it's not actually a solve problem, because in the real world, you can't just hand-wave a solution, but have to pursue a long-term effort. And in fact, contrary to your statements, both countries yo
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If you want to talk about America, instead of uselessly lambasting progressives over a strawman, why not bring up examples like Flint, Michigan
Flint was going to run out of water? Of course not. The issue in Flint was a combination of economics and ethics, not a matter of environmental abuse or over-use of a limited resource.
The sequence of events in Flint were, simply (removing politics as much as practical):
Flint once upon a time Flint had it's own water system, as did the neighboring city of Detroit.
Over time, Flint found it expensive to maintain it's own water system, so it opted to source all it's water from Detroit.
Then one day, Flint decide
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You got one bit wrong. It doesn't invalidate your argument, though.
Flint adds chemicals to water supply to address one problem, but the chemical leeches lead off the old water mains in Flint.
Flint didn't add the necessary chemicals, which allowed the calcites that coated the pipes to break up. Then, other corrosive chemicals in the Flint River leached the lead out of the pipes.
Remember that GM stopped using Flint water because it was corroding the engines of their cars.
The media, politicians, and community leaders all try to find blame in everyone but the residents of Flint that were trying to save money on their water bill, apparently at any cost.
Completely unfair. The emergency manager of Flint didn't like the deal struck with Detroit Water, and instead of waiting for the Lake Huron plant to become ope
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Sorry your links actually defeat your claim.
The Israel link is about how desalinized water is too expensive for agriculture - which is true, and not what we are discussing. Agriculture requires really cheap water, and cannot be supported with desalinization. We are discussing water for cities, which can afford to pay a lot more for water. And the Dubai iceberg project is intended for a different purpose - using the ice mountain to create a microclimate (its even in the subheading of the article if you did n
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Here's the thing about plotting a story: time matters.
That's the reason for the whole ticking time bomb [tvtropes.org] device. Time pressure creates the possibility of failure.
Re: How do some people use so much? (Score:2)
My family of two uses 1000 gal per 6 months. Or 3 gals per person per day.
How do you use so much?
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Did you count the restaurant where you dined? Did you count the car wash? Did you count your consumption at the office - water, coffee, toilet, window washing, landscaping?
Per person consumption means everything counts.
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two of us live on my off grid house, using rainwater stored in two 10 ton tanks. That'll just last us 4 or 5 months. That's 33 US gallons a day for two people. There are no leaks in the system. I'll admit to taking luxurious showers.
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Here in the US that is only true if your toilet was manufactured 30+ years ago.
Also, stop flushing every time you #1. It is both wasteful and silly.
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Leaky pipes? Dripping faucets? It adds up.
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Third: make sure the tenant pays the water bill as part of the lease. That will get them looking at it.
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Protip: You can drill out your modern shower heads and get decent flow back. The restriction is typically brass, drills like butter.
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I can't figure out how they can possibly use so much; wtf people?
Look for a running toilet that flushes all by itself. Renters are famous for not thinking thru the implications of such "minor problems" in a rental unit.
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I can't figure out how they can possibly use so much; wtf people?
Home illegal drug production lab or farm in the basement . . . ?
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My family of 4 + 2 dogs used 5,000 gallons last month, or around 42 gallons per person, per day. That is squarely in the average usage for us, between 3,000 and 7,000 gallons high and low for the year.
Our WATER bill was under $12 US. Our sewer portion of the bill was $38 US.
In the Midwestern USA, we usually have too much water, and have to be mindful that often the water we use was recently in the sewer system of the city upstream from us.
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"My water bill for a family of 4 is at the 2K gallon rate which is about 16 gallons each for a month and the bill is around $27. "
That's pretty cheap for a civilized country.
A shame that you can't drink it safely.
Re:How do some people use so much? (Score:5, Informative)
You each use only 16 gallons per month? Less than half a gallon a day? Is Saturday bath day in your house? Is the last person to bathe the one who drains the tub? I must be misunderstanding what you're saying.
No, he said:
My water bill for a family of 4 is at the 2K gallon rate which is about 16 gallons each for a month
2000 gallons /month/family
* 1/4 family/person = 500 gallons / person / month
* 1/30 month/day = 16.66 gallons / person / day
* 3.785 gallons / litre
= 63 litre/person/day
That's not too bad.
We live in Cape Town, our household (comprising 2 adults, 3 kids aged 3-8) uses 5kl/month, or 33.3 litres / person / day, well below the 87l limit (but there isn't much more we can do to save water in our house). This includes:
- All personal hygeine (toilet, shower etc.) except obviously anything at work/school (we don't shower at a gym or anything like that)
- All washing (dishes, laundry etc.) and cleaning in the house
- All drinking water and food preparation
- We use grey water (e.g. collect bath and shower water) for our small vegetable garden, but haven't used any water for the rest of the garden since they started water restrictions.
- The kids share one small plastic bath tub inside the normal bath tub, adults show with a 20l container in the shower, and don't use more than that, and don't shower every day (2-3 times a week).
- We haven't washed our cars in a year.
Lots of people have installed rain collection tanks and complete grey-water systems, and some have had boreholes/wells drilled (but there are long waiting lists with all contractors who install all of these).
I don't know why they haven't reduced the limit further, as it really isn't difficult to use less. 50l/person/day is probably achievable and still relatively fair.
The city has also imposed a 10.5kl limit per household per month, and any household that needs more because they have more than 4 occupants must apply for a higher allocation, but since we are way below we don't apply.
We know of other people who used didn't abide by the restrictions when they were more lenient, they have been forced to pay to have water restriction devices installed, which limit their daily water use (unused daily water accumulates for the rest of the month, but unused monthly water doesn't accumulate/roll over).
There are a lot more issues at play here than described in the BBC article, as the majority (60%0 of the water available in the dams in the Western Cape was allocated by the national government to agriculture. That is understandable, as even that allocation is too little for them (with the amount of rain over the past year), with many farmers having to choose between killing their livestock and taking loans to buy feed (and still possibly have to kill the livestock later anyway).
For some detail on how bad the drought is, see some rainfall stats [uct.ac.za] for Cape Town. The past 3 years we have had less than the 20th percentile of annual rainfall over the last 40 years.
You can also see the trend of water storage in the dams here [dws.gov.za]
We really hope some of the short-term mitigation plans (small-scale desalination plants that can be completed before we run out of water, ground-water extraction etc.) are sufficient to get us to Winter (and rain), but we if the trend of the last 3 years continues, we may not make it to Dec.
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We live in Cape Town We really hope some of the short-term mitigation plans (small-scale desalination plants that can be completed before we run out of water, ground-water extraction etc.) are sufficient to get us to Winter (and rain), but we if the trend of the last 3 years continues, we may not make it to Dec.
Isn't December summer in Cape Town?
Winter is the traditional rainy season in Cape Town, although not so much in recent years... it's known as the green season.
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We live in Cape Town
We really hope some of the short-term mitigation plans (small-scale desalination plants that can be completed before we run out of water, ground-water extraction etc.) are sufficient to get us to Winter (and rain), but we if the trend of the last 3 years continues, we may not make it to Dec.
Isn't December summer in Cape Town?
Yes, it is.
I should have been more clear. If you manage to see the graphs on dam levels in the links I posted before it broke (is slashdotting still a thing?), you would have seen that the dams in the Western Cape had the following min/max levels and the total precipitation for the year in Cape Town:
2014 - 72%-100% 511mm
2015 - 48-65% 235mm
2016 - 30%-62% 221mm
2017 - 20%-38% < 200mm (153mm up to Dec 18, we did get a bit of rain towards the end of Dec., but not very much).
The dam levels are now at about 30
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But that number might only push back the deadline, not stop them from running out.
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If you count all the water that went into producing said items that I eat and use, then my water usage is much much higher.
Re:19 Gal/day is not out (Score:5, Interesting)
I was thinking the same thing, but then I started looking a little harder at this. I was a bit shocked to see that someone that takes a shower every day has already used around 17 gallons of water. Flush your toilet once and you've just used the last two gallons of your ration for the day!
Then there's all sorts of other household overhead like washing dishes and clothes, cooking, and more. And you still haven't drank even your first glass of water for the day. (half a gallon is recommended every day, but that can include beverages)
We use (waste?) a lot of water every day. I'd like to see reuse of "grey water" become commonplace or even required. Most water could be reused in the toilet for example. Most "washers" (be they people, clothes, dishes, etc) are used to flush away contaminants, but then we don't bother to filter and reuse the water, we just dump it just like it is right down the drain, which is a huge waste.
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should be made mandatory on all new builds
It's called a sewage treatment plant (Score:2)
Generally speaking everyone, everywhere is drinking treated sewage from all the cities upstream anyway, so what's the problem with just pumping your own treated sewage back up to the purification plant and reusing it a few times in the same city before flushing it down the river to the next one?
Greywater is of course also a wonderful solution - why bother making water potable first if you're just going to wash/flush/etc. with it? I've even heard some cities have greywater systems running parallel to the po
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Forget required, in many places I'd settle for allowed. In my jurisdiction for instance it's illegal!
Re:19 Gal/day is not out (Score:5, Insightful)
The shower is probably the best example of potential for reclamation. Most people would be very lucky to get 1/8c of actual suspended materials from that 17 gallons of shower water. (most of which is dead skin and hair) Compare that to the "super concentrated contaminants" of your morning #2, in just two gallons of water. Clearly the shower is going waaay too far in diluting things.
I'd agree though they could certainly take the filtering too far and not push enough water down the blackwater system, causing it to not flow efficiently. A single day's dishwasher, shower, and clothes washer could be over-concentrated into a pint or two of thick sludge that won't travel well.
And it's no different than those "low volume" flush toilets that you sometimes have to ring the handle a second (or third!) time to get them to empty the bowl properly. Even if you took that 17 gallon shower and only lightly concentrated it into one gallon of blackwater to (easily) go down the sewer, that's 16 gallons left to flush the toilet with. That right there will probably handle the average person's toilet use for the entire day, without placing any additional strain on the sewer system.
It's not only doable, it's actually not that difficult to do right.
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Or 10 gallons if it's a Navy Shower [threeactionsproject.org].
A dual flush toilet [wikipedia.org] uses as little as 3 liters (0.8 gallons) for liquid waste or 4.5 liters (1.2 gallons) for solid waste.
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If I tried to do that, I'd probably save less water than I wasted while I cussed and fiddled with the hot and cold knobs as I oscillated between freeze and fry trying to get the water resumed properly.
(why aren't temperature controlled showers more common??)
Re:19 Gal/day is not out (Score:5, Interesting)
Or 10 gallons if it's a Navy Shower [threeactionsproject.org].
10 gallons??? Listen sonny boy, back in my day we'd get NJP for wasting that much water.
Here is a "real" navy shower:
1. Turn water on and get wet
2. Turn off the water, and then soap up face, hands, and groin.
3. Turn water on and rinse.
4. Turn off the water and dry off.
5. Wait a week for your next shower rotation.
Even when the water was on, it wasn't much more than a trickle.
We'd use 3 gallons, tops. And this was on a gator. Submariners have it much worse. They can do it with one gallon, and would consider 3 gallons to be a "Hollywood shower".
Semper Fi.
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he biggest issue with the "Navy shower" is that it is, pretty much by definition, a COLD shower. Having had a few years experience with them on a boomer many years ago, I can assure you that you won't get hot water into that shower before you have to turn it off.
A Hollywood Shower, on the other hand (the one 99.9% of us think of when we think "shower" - turn the water on, wash, shampoo, rinse, spend time under a spray of hot water) is really seductive - hard to go back
Re: 19 Gal/day is not out (Score:3)
About 1980, I sailed a small boat across the Atlantic. Water was a major concern as we had to allow for double the trip time of 22days in case we had severe problems (we didnâ(TM)t, fortunately ). We had limited tankage, and desalination had not been invented.
We washed in salt water, washed dishes in saltwater, the toilet use saltwater. Our consumption was about 2.2 litres per day each. Not 22, 2.2.
This was basically for drinking and cooking. It was ok. We did have a limited supply of drinks (one per d
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I thought that was the sound effect that came with the discussion of toilets?
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Shorter you: "Let them eat cake"
Re:Civilization is hard work (Score:5, Interesting)
All my South African friends are now expats and gave swapped their SA citizenship for somewhere else. None of them really want to admit that SA is going the way Zimbabwe went post independence but it looks that way.
E.g. here's President Jacob Zuma singing 'Kill the Boer[white people]'. Bonus - the sign language interpreter obviously doesn't know sign language and is just bluffing
http://limpingchicken.com/2013... [limpingchicken.com]
The 'fake' sign language interpreter, at the centre of the world's attention following his bizarre performance at Nelson Mandela's memorial event, has been found interpreting in another video.
This time he's interpreting for Jacob Zuma, the South African President, as he sings a song called 'Kill the Boer'. Despite his now infamous short-comings as an interpreter, there is no mistaking his sign for machine gun!
Mr Zuma has since said that he'll stop singing the song to avoid creating racial tension.
'Kill the Boer' is actually illegal under SA hate speech laws, though the ruling ANC will appeal. And regardless of how that appeal goes, they'll keep singing it
https://www.dailymaverick.co.z... [dailymaverick.co.za]
Finally, on Friday March 26th 2010, the question of the legality of the phrase was brought before a South African court. According to Acting Judge Leon Halgryn of the South Gauteng High Court, it is now unconstitutional to utter or sing the phrase "dubul'ibhunu" ("shoot the boer") in the country. Halrgyn ruled that the phrase amounts to hate speech, and is therefore not protected by section 16 of the constitution, which safeguards freedom of speech.
https://www.dailymaverick.co.z... [dailymaverick.co.za]
So you've got President inciting genocide against white people and the people around him are too dumb or corrupt to hire someone who can do sign language.
Yup, if I was a South African I'd be looking for a passport someplace else too.
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Yeah, he's basically all kinds of awful. And the signs are he'll have his wife takeover from him so he can go on ruling by proxy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Since 2015, Jacob Zuma has been understood to favour his ex-wife, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, to succeed him both as President of the African National Congress and as President of South Africa, in order that he remains in control of the ANC and the state through her, and so he can avoid prosecution for still pending criminal charges.
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You're behind the times, 18th of December 2017, the ANC party rejected his ex-wife as their future president and elected the current deputy president as party leader and future state president. https://www.timeslive.co.za/anc-conference-2017/2017-12-18-cyril-ramaphosa-wins-anc-presidential-race/ [timeslive.co.za]
Watching the crowd waiting for the results to be announced and seeing Jacob Zuma sitting with a stunned and unhappy look on his face was brilliant.
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Well there's a result. It'll be interesting to see if Ramaphosa is better as president. Or if he gets knobbled somehow before he gets there.
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The ANC just elected their new leadership for the next 5 years a few weeks ago. Thankfully, NDZ lost the vote for president of the ANC, so she will not succeed him as president of the country after the 2019 election. Cyril Ramaphosa, the new ANC president (and currently the Deputy President of the country) ran his entire campaign pretty much around fighting corruption, and has reportedly already had a number of meetings with Zuma around an exit strategy.
However, reports came out today about the terms under
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However, reports came out today about the terms under which JZ wants to step down - he wants NDZ as interim president until the general elections in 2019, and he wants certain ministers to retain their portfolios as well. He's also reported insisted on immunity from prosecution for both the fraud charges that he's already facing, as well as anything else that comes up from the upcoming inquiry into state capture. It's quite laughable because by requesting those terms, he's basically admitting that he's guilty of everything he's been accused of - why else would he insist on the minister of energy retaining his portfolio, if not to ensure a corrupt nuclear deal with Russia is completed successfully?
The worst case is that JZ or NDZ or some other crony of his stay on a president more or less indefinitely like Mugabe did in Zimbabwe.
Actually the same thing has happened in Russia - Putin ran into term limits, his crony Medvedev took over and then Putin got in again with an extended term. He'll be in power until 2024 and anyone likely to beat him will simply be kept of the ballot as happened to Alexei Navalny.
In fact the gloomy Mugabe/Putin comparison is something my Russian friends pointed out.
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Not sure how popular golf courses are in South Africa. Golf courses in California tend to get exempt from water restrictions. It takes a lot of water to keep those golf courses lush and green during droughts.
That's a slap in the face if true. Common man gets slapped with water restrictions but wealthy man gets lush watered grass to play his rich man sport on.
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By equipment, golf is less expensive than skiing. What makes them rich people sports is accessibility to places where you can play. Golf is much more accessible with public courses with cheap green fees. However there are still private courses which you have to pay a membership to access as well as golf courses with high greens fees that don't require membership.
Skiing is a rich man sport in the same sense and it's worse than golf. There's capital investment necessary for a ski lodge plus the equipment to e
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I mean it's been a while since this site was relevant, but news about drinking water in a city in South Africa surely doesn't count as news for nerds, considering I can read this in better places with real journalism. I don't need a referrer to the BBC.
One editor in particular has a knack for irrelevant stories with a British taint, but still what year was it evident that slashdot finally lost it?
If it had a technical or scientific bent: How to solve water issues? Could be news for nerds. Regardless, it is news that matters. A major city running out of water matters.
I disagree (Score:2)
news about drinking water in a city in South Africa surely doesn't count as news for nerds,
I find water infrastructure pretty interesting; it doesn't get much nerdier than that!
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File it under stuff that matters.
Why news for nerds *and* stuff that matters? Because nerds knowing about stuff that matters is a very good thing. Nerds matter, today more than ever.
There was a time not so long ago that every major city had multiple daily newspapers (sometimes with morning and evening editions), and at least one paper in every city had a science desk. The reporters in the science desk would put out a weekly science section, but their real purpose was to provide science and tech backgroun
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If the Earth is flat, then why do I live near a hill?