Cape Town, South Africa - A Huge City - Is About To Run Out Of Water

Cape Town, South Africa is about to run out of water. It
would be the first major worldwide city to do so.

I'm super worried now about my very close friends Denis and Michael, who live in Cape Town, South Africa.  

That's because the city of roughly 3.7 million people is about to completely run out of water. That's right: They're facing an immediate prospect of  no water for drinking, cooking, bathing, fire protection, you name it.

Right now, "Zero Day" the day the city runs completely dry, is predicted to be April 12 - recently moved up from April 21.

That means no water from faucets, no fire protection to speak of. People will have to go to emergency tanks to get a pittance of water.

According to Business Insider:

"If that happens, the only way Capetonians will be allowed to get water from the city will be through a pre-industrial style network of 200 water distribution points. Thousands of people will line p at those taps around the city to collect their allotted 25 liters of water (per person) each day, then haul it home to shower, clean, flush, and do everything else that requires fresh H2O.

'I personally doubt whether it is possible for the city the size of Cape Town to distribute sufficient water to its residents, using its own resources, one the the undergroud water pipe network has been shut down,' Western Cape Premier Helen Zille wrote Monday in the Daily Maverick."

Consider also the logistics of having people go to these water allocation sits, and how, say, a family of four would need to lug 100 liters of water home. (A hundred liters of water weights 220.46 pounds, plus the weight of the container it's in.)

The Daily Maverick outlines the scenario:

"If every family sends one person to fetch their water allocation, about 5,000 people will congregate at each (water collection station) every day. That creates a logistical nightmare of its own. In addition, it will be impossible for individuals to carry, by hand, 100 liters of water allocated for a family of four every day. So provision will have to be made for transport. The City  has not yet given details of how traffic will be managed."

Several factors - some weather and climate related, some not - has led Cape Town to this crisis. The city with its Mediterranean climate depends upon winter rains, when they normally get three or four inches of rain per month in June, July and August.

The winter rains have failed Cape Town in recent years. On top of that, there's been a long term downward trend in winter rain amounts in this area, likely due to climate change.  Also, the long term trend in Cape Town has been in favor of rising temperatures, also a climate change symptom. Hotter weather increases evaporation and demand for water, which doesn't help Cape Town at all.

As far as I know, this would be the first time a major world city has run out of water. (Sao Paulo, Brazil came close in 2015.)

It's late summer in Cape Town now - the dry season. It won't rain anytime soon. Normally it starts to rain in May or so as South Africa enters winter, but it's anyone's guess whether this winter will be dry or wet.

They're trying to save water in Cape Town, but so far, it's not enough.

Of course, if Day Zero arrives and Cape Town runs out of water, you have to worry about civil unrest. According to Business Insider:

"Premier Zille has asked President Jacob Zuma top declare a national disaster for the city, since Cape Town may need more police and military personnel if Day Zero arrives to 'defend storage facilities' ad deal with disease outbreaks as sanitation worsens. She also said officials hope to store some emergency water at military bases 'for safety'

Cape Town officials say efforts to get people to cut back on their water usage haven't been working. The city has been urging every resident to consume less than 50 liters of municipal water a day, and to collect what they use when showering and han washing and re-use the 'grey water' to flush toilets and water plants."

So Cape Town really is careering toward a disaster.

I can imagine the staggering economic effects this would have on Cape Town, and to a just slightly lesser extent the whole of South Africa.

Cape Town is South Africa's second largest city so imagine how commerce would grind to a halt with no water. Factories can't run. Offices would be crippled. And people would waste so much time standing in line for water that they wouldn't have time to work.

Cape Town is also a premier tourist destination. It's a beautiful coastal city with a wonderful climate. (Except for the obvious fact that the winter rains seems to have stopped.)

The Daily Maverick put the economic effects in this perspective:

"The province's economy is supported by two major water intensive sectors: touristm and agriculture.  Between them, they employ about 600,000 people who (at a conservative estimate of four persons per household) support almost three million people. One of our major priorities has been to keep them employed. The crisis associatd with large-scale job losses and hunger would greatly exacerbate the catastrophe of dry taps."

Weather and climate crises can also create unpredictable civil unrest.  Some studies suggest the devastating Syrian civil war, which pretty much destabilized the whole planet, had some of its roots in climate change. (There were obviously many other factors causing this as well.)

Farmers flocked to cities as unprecedented drought struck Syria, and that helped create unrest, which grew into that civil war.

There's already sign of gloom and panic in and around Cape Town. South Africa's national weather service can't promise the winter rains will come this year either.

Long range forecasts are tricky: Note that in California, few predicted the epic drought breaking rains last winter, and fewer still thought southern California would be so incredibly bone dry so far this winter.  Last year, the South African weather service said the area would have a wet winter during the June to August time frame in 2017. That surely didn't happen. 

Moreover, people who can afford it are already buying up industrial-size water jugs to store when what looks like the deep, inevitable water crisis hits.

Cape Town officials are frantically drilling more wells for groundwater and trying to rapidly build desalinization plants, but not many people think all these will be ready by the time the water runs out.

Also, some winter rains are almost inevitable in the next few months, so the period Cape Town is out of water might be relatively short lived. But if the winter rains are lame again, the water won't last long at all. They'll be in this situation again by late this year unless it really rains.

Of course, nobody knows where all this will lead. But to my good friends Denis and Michael in Cape Town, I hope the weather is "miserable"where you live this winter.  By miserable, of course I mean very, very rainy.