Cape Town Drought Disaster

We have been spoilt. Now we must get back to basics. And relearn who we are. And not depend anymore.

Cape Town: February 2018?

A documentary about Water in Cape Town!!

There is a very good chance that our water sources will run dry in February, 2018, less than three months time! We should be doing everything possible to avert this disaster, even if it means temporarily drilling into the aquifer or sinking well points, and BTW, many houses have had well points for decades in this City and in many others, without anyone telling us off.

Of-course large scale desalination is still required and the City's attempt at adding 20 million litres a day to fix the problem is really too little too late.

We need 2.4 billion litres of water a day to be considered world class. Before the crisis we were using 1.2 billion litres of water a day. Now, two years later we have already halved our water consumption and we are under 600 million litres a day and now the council have asked us to reduce our consumption to under 500 million litres a day. We will get there. And we are all learning a great deal about how to conserve water and to go back to the days before government told us that they could support us with cheap food, cheap electricity, cheap water and cheap transport. We have millions of years of doing things ourselves before governments turned up 80 years ago and started spoiling us.

And Israel has shown that desalination can be done at R7.50 per kL and most people who actually pay for water in Cape Town already pay this.

We have been spoilt. And now it is time to clean ourselves up and do things ourselves, again.

My recommendations to dramatically speed up investment in getting solutions on the ground:

1. Allow private people to invest in all water and electricity (we still have an electricity crisis) and sewerage infrastructure before tax and before VAT.
2. Incentivise people to convert their pools from chlorine and salt to oxygenated pools that contain drinking water.
3. Incentivise people to not use water from the grid. Adding a water Levy is counter to this.
4. Start a crowd-funding campaign to raise money for a large scale desalination plant in Cape Town
5. Create a database of preferred supplies.

When it rains, pour on the gratitude. David Lipschitz's letter to the Cape Times. Friday 27th January 2017.

Dear Editor

Photo by David Lipschitz

It seems to me that we need to find alternative ways of thinking about our water crisis. Pool covers, well-points, boreholes, dehumidifiers, water restrictions, water tanks, etc, are all great, but are there any other ways of bringing rain?

Rain dances and prayer meetings have also been suggested and shouldn't be poo-pooed. I personally pray for rain, and when it rains I make a point of watching the rain and going outside to celebrate and sing in the rain. I even set my alarm for the early hours when rain is predicted.

We hear how important affirmations and gratitude are.

Let's not take our rain for granted and let's celebrate and enjoy it as much as possible.

Yours faithfully,
David Lipschitz
Milnerton

Keep Praying for Rain. David Lipschitz Letter to the Cape Times published Tue 2 Aug 2016

DEAR all, please keep praying for rain.

Please stop sending (God) confusing signals. Cape Town is great. It rains in winter and it's sunny in summer.

We need renewal in winter. We need the rain.

We need to get on with our lives and enjoy the wetness.

Our dams are filling up. See http://www.capetown.gov.za/en/water/pages/weeklydamlevels.aspx

Yes, it is wet out there and yes, some people are suffering. We can help those who need help, but if we have no water, we are all dead, rich and poor.

Last week, 45 672 megalitres of water were added to the dams.

Three more weeks of this and the dam levels will be higher than at this time last year and "Level 2" and "Level 1" water restrictions can be lifted.