Two months until Capetonians will be drinking seawater

By the end of August‚ Capetonians will no longer be totally reliant on their struggling dams for water.

That is when the City of Cape Town hopes to have desalination and other plants up and running and pumping out up to 500 million litres of water a day.

A council document asks for ideas and information by July 10 from companies and organisations interested in supplying‚ installing and operating temporary reverse osmosis plants “at various locations along the city’s seashore and certain inland locations”.

Kevin Balfour‚ head of infrastructure in the city council water and sanitation department‚ said the council wanted to have several small‚ intermediate and large plants‚ with the first commissioned in August and ready to produce drinking water by the end of the month.‚

“The city will require these reverse osmosis plants to be operational for at least six months‚ but might require (them) to remain in production for ... one year or possibly even two years‚ depending upon the rainfall‚” he said.

Level 4 water restrictions remain in place in Cape Town despite the fact that dams have started filling again after the first heavy winter rainfall.

On Monday‚ dam levels were up 3.7 percentage points on the previous week‚ at 23.1%. “Clearly‚ the drought crisis continues as dam levels are critically lower than usual at the start of the winter‚” said Xanthea Limberg‚ the mayoral committee member for utilities.