International South Africa's Water Crisis: Taps Have Run Dry Across Johannesburg

they have a negative immigration rate. care to try again?

Funny I remember watching a documentary about emergency services in SA called "Tell me and I will forget" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1608217/) and they all claimed they were stretched to the breaking point due to open borders with neighboring countries and the problems that those people would cause.
 
Funny I remember watching a documentary about emergency services in SA called "Tell me and I will forget" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1608217/) and they all claimed they were stretched to the breaking point due to open borders with neighboring countries and the problems that those people would cause.

sorry the numbers dont match up with what you saw on TV. South Africa has a negative immigration rate.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/resources/the-world-factbook/geos/sf.html
 
Well, this certainly doesn't sound like it's run like a shit hole.............. at all.
 
South Africa will turn into a shithole similar to Zimbabwe in 3 years unless Zuma is removed from office. The end of apartheid has failed to bring economic equality and prosperity to South Africa. It failed to resolve any of the underlying social problems plaguing the country other than apartheid itself. I wonder if it would have worked out better if the whites and blacks each got their own state back in the 1990's.
 
Dam project fast-tracked to tackle Cape Town water crisis
2018-01-13

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Cape Town – Plans to increase water supply to the Voëlvlei Dam, scheduled to come on stream in 2024, have been fast-tracked to 2019 to help with Cape Town’s water crisis, GroundUp reported on Friday.

Sputnik Ratau, spokesperson for the Department of Water Affairs, told GroundUp that Minister Nomvula Mokonyane had said the project should be accelerated and that it would be underway by 2019.

The scheme involves pumping winter rainfall from the Berg River into the dam.

The National Water and Sanitation Management Plan, published in draft form by the department in December 2017, says that the Voëlvlei project is one of a handful of "projects of national importance" and is set for "urgent implementation". As the country’s second economic hub, Cape Town "is already in deficit" and the project is "already overdue", the plan notes.

Though much attention has been focused on the City of Cape Town’s attempts to manage the water crisis, in terms of the Water Act of 1998, the national government is the "public trustee" of the nation’s water resources and must ensure that water is "protected, used, developed, conserved, managed and controlled in a sustainable and equitable manner, for the benefit of all persons".

"The National Government, acting through the Minister, has the power to regulate the use, flow and control of all water in the Republic," according to the Act.

'Intervention plans'

Ratau said that, as well as the Voëlvlei Dam project, the following measures were being put in place by the department:
  • Monitoring heavy water users;
  • Contact with the Borehole Water Association of South Africa to raise awareness about the drought within the association;
  • The department is on emergency standby to urgently implement dredge canals in the Voëlvlei Dam, in order to access the last 10% of water that cannot be used at the moment.
Asked what the department would do if Cape Town should run out of water at the end of April 2018, as estimated by the City, Ratau said that "we are not at Day Zero" and that the date was just a projection.

But, he said, the department had put "intervention plans" in place. He didn’t explain what these plans were.

Mayor Patricia de Lille said this week that, because water consumption was "too high" over the holiday period, Day Zero had been moved from April 29 to April 22, 2018. (Interestingly, the City’s Day Zero estimate corresponds precisely to the one predicted by UCT researcher Piotr Wolski’s online tool.)

Ratau told GroundUp that the department was working with both the provincial government and municipalities affected by the drought and water crisis, because "this is not a national department issue alone".

The City is in "constant touch with the department", confirmed Peter Flower, director for Water and Sanitation in the City of Cape Town.

Waiting for minister's budget speech

Flower explained to GroundUp that, usually at this time of year, the city used up to 200 million litres daily from the Voëlvlei Dam, but because of the drought, only ten million litres were being taken off. Voëlvlei is Cape Town’s second biggest dam, while Theewaterskloof is the largest. Together they make up over 70% of the city’s water supply. Their current levels are 20.6% and 16.8% respectively, compared to 49.5% and 39.2% last year.

Total dam levels are at 29.7%, according to the City’s webpage, but the last 10% or so is difficult to use. The city’s overall water usage last week was 578 million litres a day (approximately a further 665 million litres daily are used by agriculture, and about 65 million daily are used by other Western Cape municipalities in the Cape Town catchment area).

Asked if the department would provide additional funding to the City and local municipalities affected by the drought and water crisis, Ratau said the department would wait for Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba’s budget speech to hear how much money the department would be allocated.

"We don’t know what the budget would be," Ratau told GroundUp. He said this was "not just about the Western Cape"; other provinces would also need more funding to help with the drought.

The provincial government has estimated that the Western Cape will need an extra R542m to help areas affected by the drought.

https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/...ked-to-tackle-cape-town-water-crisis-20180113
 
Damn imagine the stench if they actually did run out of water and nobody could shower
 
youd imagine a headline like this would garner more interest.

are any other cities in south africa facing DOOM as well?
 
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Pupils are required to bring drinking water to school in Cape Town
16 January 2018 - By Petru Saal

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Pupils will start the year bringing their own bottled drinking water to at least one high school that is taking drastic steps to mitigate the effects of a looming water crisis in Cape Town.

Bergvliet High School outlined its strategy in a circular to parents and staff on Monday. It illustrates how significant the impact of the drought and water shortage is on daily life in the city.

When pupils return to school‚ they will have limited access to drinking water and some toilet facilities will be closed.

“As the water crisis heightens in the Western Cape in general and Cape Town in particular‚ Bergvliet High School is obliged to take measures to reduce our water consumption‚” said the notice from principal Stephen Price.

Efforts to reduce water consumption will include:

- Upstairs toilets being closed due to a lack of water pressure capable of reaching the second floor.
- Downstairs toilets being open before school‚ at breaks and after school, otherwise locked with keys available should they need to be used during lessons.
- One hand basin tap operational per bathroom‚ with the others disconnected. Hand sanitiser will be provided.
- No showering at school‚ pupils will have to bring their own bottled water as drinking water will be limited.
- Pupils will be required to bring‚ according to a roster system‚ 5l of bottled water per month to be used daily in class.

“I know the situation is not ideal but we have to take the measures to play our part in this water crisis‚” said Price.

The school told parents that it had been approached by the city’s disaster management team with a view to it being used as a water collection point for residents‚ should “Day Zero” arrive when the dams are empty.

Parents were urged to share their ideas to save water.

The provincial education department said that schools had adopted “various water saving measures as they prepare for continued drought in 2018”.

Spokesperson Jessica Shelver said: “Some 423 schools already have boreholes and water tanks‚ and many schools are harvesting rain water. The department is monitoring water consumption and will intervene where necessary where water consumption is excessive.

https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/so...s-take-drinking-water-to-school-in-cape-town/
 
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they have a negative immigration rate. care to try again?

Funny I remember watching a documentary about emergency services in SA called "Tell me and I will forget" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1608217/) and they all claimed they were stretched to the breaking point due to open borders with neighboring countries and the problems that those people would cause.

Legal immigration maybe? I remember reading about how they have close to 10 million Zimbabweans illegally which shocked me

Illegal immigration is definitely a problem, as we lack the capacity to police our border, but immigration (illegal or otherwise) is not as out of control as some suggest. A couple years ago, the New York Times and the BBC claimed that we had 5 million immigrants - but the New York Times and the BBC are apparently run by idiots who don't know how to check facts.
SA has about 2.2 million non-citizens living here. Maybe 2.5 million today, when you account for illegals that evaded the census bureau. That's about 4% of our 52-million population.


7437 is right in pointing out that we have a net negative immigration.
Educated South Africans (mostly white, but some black) often get out of the country as soon as they can. So the infrastructural strain is mostly the result of 'white flight', which is mostly an outcome of affirmative action and the Broad-Based Black Empowerment Act.
Black foreigners do not benefit from the act, and so we either get illegals (who are pretty much useless) or educated Zimbabweans, etc, who may work hard and be quality individuals. but do not provide their employers any benefits under black economic empowerment and so are often passed over by companies that are hiring non-whites in order to meet their quota.
 
They don't have a water shortage. They have a salt surplus.

I'm a glass half full kinda guy....
 
Although not the best for the environment, is it time to build desalination plants?

That was going to be my suggestion, other than the fact they’re apparently super expensive, probably outside the scope of financial viability for an African nation.
 
youd imagine a headline like this would garner more interest.

are any other cities in south africa facing DOOM as well?

I’m interested in following this just to know if it is a DOOM scenario. The general calm around the whole thing is throwing me off.
 

You read our earlier discussion about desalination plant in Carlsbad right?

It was built by the same people with the same tech as the one in Israel, the difference here is Israel also built its own dedicated nuclear power plant to provide the cheap electricity required to run the facility.

On the other hand, the one in Carlsbad costs an arm and a leg to operate, because they have to buy that energy on the open market, which is the case for nearly all desal plants around the world except the Middle East.

Israel can build as many nuclear power plants as they want uncumbered by peskt environmentalist, same with Arab countries where fossile fuel is as cheap as sand. For everybody else, energy remains an expensive obstacle.

http://www.powermag.com/desalination-expands-energy-challenges-remain/
 
You read our earlier discussion about desalination plant in Carlsbad right?

It was built by the same people with the same tech as the one in Israel, the difference here is Israel also built its own dedicated nuclear power plant to provide the cheap electricity required to run the facility.

On the other hand, the one in Carlsbad costs an arm and a leg to operate, because they have to buy that energy on the open market, which is the case for nearly all desal plants around the world except the Middle East.

Israel can build as many nuclear power plants as they want uncumbered by peskt environmentalist, same with Arab countries where fossile fuel is as cheap as sand. For everybody else, energy remains an expensive obstacle.

http://www.powermag.com/desalination-expands-energy-challenges-remain/
Nope I didn't. Quite frankly i know only a little about the subject and wanted to sound smart.

But hey... build more nuke plants.... problem solved.

Funny thing is I learned how to distill water for survival using a pot, black garbage bag and a hose....
 
Nope I didn't. Quite frankly i know only a little about the subject and wanted to sound smart.
The discussion on unfeasible Desalination vs. Water Recycling start from page 3 of this thread. You will at least quadruple your knowledge on the subject matter just by skimming through :)

But hey... build more nuke plants.... problem solved.

Tree huggers are the reason why there haven't been any new power plants or water dams built in California for half a century, despite the population tripled.

I'm also quite sure a billion dollar nuclear power plant is outside of Cape Town's city budget, and thus people gonna be paying up the wazoo for water when those desalination projects they're building now finally comes online a few years from now.
 
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