anyone who has been to Cape Town during summer knows how full of tourists the place gets. There has been a severe drought over the past few years and to add to this, a few bad fires along with inefficient town planning and insufficient water catchment programmes...thus the city is on category 5 water restrictions.
The city council are erecting two desalination plants one of which should be up and running by March next year or so we have been told. Only hitch is that the plant is targeted to be placed in Cape Town harbor just around the corner from the Sea Point effluent pipe, an old pipe that breaks down alot and which does not go out to sea very far. So...will the city of Cape Town be drinking its own crap or will a solution be found?
Another point of concern, are three rivers which flow underneath the city constantly. Rivers that were chaneled under the city before the city was expanded many many years ago. The city council have not caught this water and fresh water flows daily into the ocean with millions of liters being lost every year. Who will catch this water, pure water, uncontaminated, to the people? No one yet.