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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

#71

Post by MichaelGG »

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…

"How do I know when to change the Filters?

You can find out if you need to change the Oas’s Purification Filter via the Oas app, showing the overall status of your Filters."

I wonder if they're using Bluetooth or other local networking or if this really means my shower needs to connect to the Internet.

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

#72

Post by mikro2nd »

PeterisP wrote: post #54
yoz-y wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would guess rising seas. Water gets closer to you, literally.

Water supplies implicitly mean freshwater supplies. Sea level rising can't help that (seawater is not usable directly, and for desalination plants the bottleneck is their capacity and power usage, not amount of seawater available) but it can make it worse e.g. if certain aquifers become saltwater.

And, since most power-generation in South Africa is from coal, desalination - it seems to me - is only aggravating the problem (climate change) over the long run.

Yes, we should probably power those plants from some renewable/sustainable source, but that's a different discussion for another day.

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

#73

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

mikro2nd wrote: post #72
PeterisP wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Water supplies implicitly mean freshwater supplies. Sea level rising can't help that (seawater is not usable directly, and for desalination plants the bottleneck is their capacity and power usage, not amount of seawater available) but it can make it worse e.g. if certain aquifers become saltwater.

And, since most power-generation in South Africa is from coal, desalination - it seems to me - is only aggravating the problem (climate change) over the long run. Yes, we should probably power those plants from some renewable/sustainable source, but that's a different discussion for another day.

> since most power-generation in South Africa is from coal

It's sad and crazy that this is still not changing. SA is a very sunny country.

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

#74

Post by mikro2nd »

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. ;)

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

#75

Post by chowells »

croon wrote: post #69
20after4 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it has what plants crave.

Not sure if you're being facetious, but saltwater kills most plants, with a few exceptions.

And just yesterday, I was thinking no one here would need to explain who Mike Judge is to the general audience.

"It's got what plants crave" is a line from his movie Idiocracy. It is directly relevant the discussion at hand, but it's also a zero-effort joke that contributes nothing new.

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

#76

Post by danmaz74 »

charlesdm wrote: post #37
badosu wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how to interpret this statement.. One part of me is disgusted at someone profiting from bad planning and misery of others, the other thinks that this is something that really needs investing.

I meant this in a positive, not negative way. A for-profit company, if done properly, will be able to introduce the required infrastructure where necessary. It should (theoretically at least) also be run in a better way -- if the infrastructure isn't functioning properly, no profits are being made.

This would maybe make sense if there was a competitive market, but, how can you have a competitive market for running water in a single city?

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

#77

Post by cup-of-tea »

devnull791101 wrote: post #29

even though the dams are almost depleted the city's lack of water is more due to political issues than water management. the government is insisting that the local desalination plant manufacturer (which supplies australia and other countries) operate through a "Black Economic Empowerment" partner which heavily inflates the cost, and most likely will be tied to "the worlds most corrupt presidents" partners in crime, t…

For those outside of SA, dam in this context means reservoir.

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

#78

Post by oneweekwonder »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #4
pjc50 wrote: post #2

Sanaa, the capital city of Yemen, has already run out of water. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-yemen-security-blockade-r... There were serious problems before the war, but now it's just a disaster area. The US supports this.

The difference is, Cape Town is not in war time. I can't think of the last time there was literal war in Cape Town, there's nothing in recent times. My best guess would be "a small but significant military engagement" on 8 January 1806 (1). Unrest in the late 1980s doesn't count. As far as I know, there were no military engagements in Cape Town during the Anglo-Boer wars (1880 - 1881 and 1899 – 1902). 1 ) https://en.…

> is not in war time

Maybe not physical destruction. But "war time" is something that will get decided by historians in 20 years time.

In a more cyber conscience world social engineering of the state[0] will become a act of war...

or something in that line, I hope.

gobble gobble

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gupta_family

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

#79

Post by TallGuyShort »

baxtr wrote: post #47
whatusername wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it’s bigger in area than any two European countries (excluding Russia) combined. Just because there’s a drought in one part of Spain __ there might be plenty of water somewhere in France.

My point is: if there’s a case to fly water (in form of grapes) to Europe, why would they not move water from one place in SA to another?

No one's consuming liters of grapes every day to survive - it's a nice-to-have and not a staple. Transporting it in massive quantities (like enough to make a dent in how much Cape Town consumes every day) changes the equation somewhat, making it prohibitively expensive to do (compared to options like, hoping for rain). Of course, this also changes the equation if we do get to the point that many lives imminently depend on it - people don't riot to be first in line to get grapes.

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

#80

Post by Dylan16807 »

spuz wrote: post #62
yoz-y wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would guess rising seas. Water gets closer to you, literally.

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

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