The City of Cape Town on Monday warned residents to curb water consumption, saying recent rains had done little to elevate the ongoing drought.
On Monday afternoon, the city’s storage dam levels stood at 23.1%, an increase of 3.7%, following recent rains.
With the last 10% of a dam’s water mostly being unusable, dam levels are effectively at 13.1%.
The mayoral committee member for informal settlements, water and waste services and energy, Councillor Xanthea Limberg, in a statement said that residents should still use less than 100l per person per day.
“Apart from safeguarding our current sustainability, we must think about building additional reserve capacity by continuing with the most hard-hitting water-saving efforts that we can muster,” Limberg said.
“It may take a few seasons of normal rainfall for the dams to recover and we must bear in mind that we are expecting an even tougher summer in 2018.”
Citywide consumption increased by 25 million litres per day and was 40 million litres above the target of 600 million litres per day, by Monday, June 12.
Meanwhile, Mayor Patricia de Lille said she had instructed city officials to divest from fossil fuel assets and companies in favour of greener and cleaner investments.
“We are going to instruct investors looking after our money not to put our money into fossil fuel-related companies, or for it to be used to fund the development of dirty and unsustainable projects,” she said in a statement.
“We want our investments to be aligned with our principles of resilience and sustainability.”
Source: News24