Cape Town’s ‘day zero’ for water supply moved closer as disaster plans are put in place
Day zero is now April 12; the operational plan for the day and beyond is still being finalised‚ based on international best practice
"Day zero" for Cape Town — the day its taps get turned off —has moved nine days closer in a week‚ and is now expected on Thursday April 12.Deputy mayor Ian Neilson‚ who has taken over management of the water crisis from mayor Patricia de Lille‚ said on Tuesday that unless Capetonians reduced their water use by almost 25% with immediate effect‚ taps would run dry in 79 days.Dam levels had fallen by 1.4 percentage points in the past week and stood at 27.2%‚ he said. Only 41% of Capetonians were using less than 87 litres of water a day‚ and from February 1 everyone in the city would need to reduce their daily consumption to 50 litres for at least 150 days.Neilson said: "The city is making an enormous effort to delay day zero by rolling out aggressive pressure-management operations across the city‚ installing thousands of water management devices on the properties of high users and ensuring we better our record-low overall water loss percentage of 16%. Our average first response time to...
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