Cape Town faces Day Zero: what happens when the city turns off the taps?

[muriel_volestrangler]

At this critical level – currently forecast for 16 April – piped supply will be deemed to have failed and the city will dispatch teams of engineers to close the valves to about a million homes – 75% of the city.
...
In place of piped water, the city will establish 200 water collection points, scattered around the city to ensure the legally guaranteed minimum of 25 litres per person per day within 200 metres of every citizen’s home.
...
Neilson stresses that Day Zero can be avoided. A lowering of pipe pressure and a public information campaign to conserve water have cut the city’s daily water consumption from 1,200 million litres to 540 million litres. If this can be pushed down another 25%, the taps should stay open to the start of the rainy season in May.
...
She illustrates her point with two maps. One – based on historical data – shows the water risk of Cape Town is green, meaning it is among the lowest in South Africa. The other – based on future climate projections – is almost the complete opposite, with the city located in a middle of an alarming red heat zone.

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/feb/03/day-zero-cape-town-turns-off-taps

[beachbum bob]

1. speaking from experience, our city, Decatur Il came with in a week of having to shut water off

several years back and state and federal officials were in full panic in how to get water for 200,000 people who depended on lake reservoir for drinking water. Not only so we lack water tankers, all the local water providers were in same boat with dropped water supplies and water trucks would have to go a few hundred miles to get filled up. Bottle water is a short term fix just to keep people hydrated for a few days or a couple weeks. Luckily we got rains just in time.

The we had 2 years of discussions on what to do and it was decided to spend $100 million on dredging our lake which had been filling up for decades with silt and this would add 30% more capacity. Another proposal which we could not get federal EPA to sign on to was to run a pipeline from our sanitary plant back to our water treatment plant which would have given us the ability to survive months more. EPA officials hid behind "their rules"...even though I am sure the ability to waive them was available. Since using the effluent as as source of direct input into a treatment plant has not supposedly been done before on this. The process is done all over the world and I believe on all the big ships...

So we can expect this to happen again as we have seen noticeable change in weather right here in the midwest

[procon]

2. Sign of the times?

I've read about once thriving ancient cities that had to abandoned when their water supply failed. Today there are many cities and towns around the world facing a fate similar to Cape Town. The reasons vary from poor planning, to overconsumption and overpopulation, lack of effective water conservation programs, frequent long-term droughts, and climate change. All of these will magnify existing problems of water supply and demand in the future.

California is in a long term drought and many small towns, including several around where I live, are already facing a water crisis. Gov. Jerry Brown ordered a 25 percent reduction in urban water use across California, but Los Angeles, a city of millions, is in trouble.