The deadline has moved nine days closer in a week‚ and is now expected on Thursday April 12.
Deputy mayor Ian Neilson‚ who has taken over management of the water crisis from mayor Patricia de Lille‚ said on Tuesday that unless Capetonians reduced their water use by almost 25% with immediate effect‚ taps would run dry in 79 days.
Dam levels had fallen by 1.4 percentage points in the past week and stood at 27.2%‚ he said. Only 41% of Capetonians were using less than 87 litres of water a day‚ and from February 1 everyone in the city would need to reduce their daily consumption to 50 litres for at least 150 days.
All but one of the city council’s seven supply augmentation projects‚ involving desalination of seawater and extraction of groundwater‚ are running behind schedule‚according to the updated dashboard.