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Cape Town could be the first city to run out of water

bbc.com

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Re: Cape Town could be the first city to run out of water

#111

Post by tonteldoos »

danmaz74 wrote: post #85
tonteldoos wrote: post #51

I'm currently in Brisbane, and arrived here while the big drought was still in progress (around 2008). Numerous restrictions, legislation for water saving measures, desal plants, etc were being implemented at the time, with pretty astounding results in terms of average water consumption. The drought broke in January 2011, and it's a little sad to see how much that was learnt, has been forgotten in the last 7 years. D…

Doesn't it make total sense to mothball the desal when you don't need it? Pity about water consumption though.

The desal plants need to be kept running (at least ticking over), otherwise it deteriorates to the point where large parts need to be replaced/fixed again where needed, afaik.

I may be wrong that the Gold Coast one is mothballed, but there were also issues about how it was funded, which means it's facing funding problems now when the drought is gone.

Re: Cape Town could be the first city to run out of water

#112

Post by tonteldoos »

mikro2nd wrote: post #74
tonteldoos wrote: post #51

I'm currently in Brisbane, and arrived here while the big drought was still in progress (around 2008). Numerous restrictions, legislation for water saving measures, desal plants, etc were being implemented at the time, with pretty astounding results in terms of average water consumption. The drought broke in January 2011, and it's a little sad to see how much that was learnt, has been forgotten in the last 7 years. D…

Very unlikely that the Cape Town drought will break any time soon. The city is in a Winter rainfall region, so there's little chance of significant rains before May or June, and even then -- and assuming that rainfall returns to something resembling "normal" -- it will take several years for dams to fully restock. A single rainy season ain't gonna do it (unless there're some pretty catastrophic rains. ;)

Very fair point, although I didn't imply that it might break this year. Whenever it breaks though, I hope the usage remains low, just in case such an event reccurs.

Re: Cape Town could be the first city to run out of water

#113

Post by goda90 »

jakewins wrote: post #66

We've been looking at reducing water use this spring; someone else might find these products useful: OAS(1) showers cap water at 5-10L per use, no matter how long you shower. Getting this installed also means we can swap our water heater to run on the solar array entirely, since you're not flushing all that energy down the drain while you shower. Waterless urinals(2) use no water at all. They work by keeping a layer…

The economics of those OAS filters don't motivate me much, since two adults taking 15 minute showers a day each would result in $40/month for filters alone. 15 minute showers per day per person in a normal shower would cost me less than $15/month in water bills.

Obviously there are use cases that need that more than I do, since I live in a wet, temperate area with plentiful water tables, but I think it demonstrates that our problems with water, and pollution, and other environmental issues have come from taking the cheapest/easiest options, so we need to work hard to make more attractive sustainable solutions for the average person.

Re: Cape Town could be the first city to run out of water

#115

Post by jedberg »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #114

The irony I've found is that when you cut water usage, the water company will INCREASE your fees because they're not making enough money. They tell us to save water, and then turn around and charge us more for using less, it's very angering.

Equally angering is when they set the conservation target as a percent of your previous usage.

I already conserve water, drought or not, because I'm cheap. When you tell me I'm not meeting my conservation targets because I can't go down another 20%, that infuriates me, especially since my usage is already 50% lower than my neighbors!

Re: Cape Town could be the first city to run out of water

#116

Post by igitur »

VoidWhisperer wrote: post #28
snowwolf wrote: post #23

This has also led to an interesting social experiment based on a theory developed by the University of California ( http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272494414... ) where household water consumption has been made public ( https://citymaps.capetown.gov.za/waterviewer/ ) in order to apply social pressure on high users.

The second link has been hugged to death or is down (it will get to the loading bars and stop there)

The init.js file is huge and I suspect they don't cache it server side. I wrote an alternative version which loads faster, but the interesting data (water usage) is obviously available only from the City of Cape Town's server and it delivers the map in one giant png file. At least the aerial map is now cached tiles from another server.

http://www.vwd.co.za/vwd/water

Re: Cape Town could be the first city to run out of water

#117

Post by igitur »

baxtr wrote: post #16

I always wondered why you can buy a lot of H2O filled fruits like grapes from South Africa in Europa. They must have some enourmous amounts of water if they can export it. Maybe the price of water isn’t high enough yet or can’t be paid?

South African table grapes are mostly farmed in... (wait for it).. a desert, in the Northern Cape, but water is ample from the Orange River that runs through it. Cape Town is some distance from that area, though.

Re: Cape Town could be the first city to run out of water

#119

Post by spuz »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #80
spuz wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you were downvoted. You weren't the one making a facetious remark, simply explaining one.

> explaining one https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16176246

I don't get it. This is just a link to another attempt to explain the facetiousness of another comment which was itself also downvoted. Why don't we downvote facetious comments instead of the comments that try to redeem them?

Re: Cape Town could be the first city to run out of water

#120

Post by igitur »

logingone wrote: post #68
overlordalex wrote: post #3

I live in Cape Town, and this article is missing some points about whats been going on: 1. "Day 0" has been moved forward - we're now expected to run out of water 21 April. 2. The daily limit of water per person is 87l but only ~50% of consumers meet this target 3. This is considered a 1/1000 year event (in contrast to 1/100 experienced elsewhere in the country recently). However due to increased population this is b…

Regarding the policy being set at national level - I've seen mention of the Western Cape seceding - how realistic was that, and has this had any effect on that? I'm ex Durban/Johannesburg, abandoned the rainbow nation 20 or so years ago with zero confidence in its future, and I'm afraid it was the right call; part of me would love to return, and the WC (there's a pun there) seceding would interest me for a move there…

To answer your question, I haven't met anyone in Cape Town who takes a WC secession seriously. There is a very small political party that advocates for it, be its treated as one of the joke parties.
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