A lot many arguments took place regarding the real cause behind the 2017 Cape town water crisis…some argue that a drought that was caused by insufficient rainfall over past thirty years be the root cause of this problem whereas others reckon that dramatically growing population and heavy agricultural usage was the ground of this issue. Some others claim that it was the lack of foresight by the national government and the failure of the government to dealt with the issue.
Cape town has been known for number of droughts in the past, but climate change has appeared to have played a role in making this one much longer. Cape town is witnessing a severe drought, but fierce restrictions on water usage have pushed back Day Zero until 2019.
2. What is Day Zero?
This day would occur if the combined level of Cape town's dams reaches 13.5%. On this day, the authorities in the city would implement full control over the water supplies by switching off all the taps in the city so that the dams reach their sufficient levels again.
Day Zero was expected to occur this April. However it was pushed back to July. At present the authorities believe that the day is likely to take place in 2019 due to the reason that households are managing to cut down their huge consumption of water by dropping down their usage by as much as 80 percent among some groups.
3. The many layers of Cape Town's Water Crisis
It is important to analyse and understand the important causes underlying the Cape Town Water Crisis, so that considerable measures can be taken to avoid a similar situation in the future.
3.1 A failure in Governance
One of the major arguments is that whether the local government was managing the crisis efficiently? Looking into this matter reveals that the government and politics were the root cause of the crisis as compared to climate change and less rainfall.
The Western Cape is the sole region in the country that is being governed by the Democratic Alliance which is the official opposition party. African national Congress runs the rest of South Africa. This shows that the association between Western Cape and the national government is complex, as it can be observed in the water crisis.
Two levels of Administration: City of Cape Town and the Western Cape region tried their best to plan ahead for drought like situation. However, the national government failed in taking appropriate measures.
Uneconomical expenses in National Department of Water and Sanitation, inaccurate water grants to agriculture and an inability to recognize or react to municipal and provincial calls for help led to the failure of taking corrective actions on time.
The crisis could have been managed efficiently if the national government had responded to the situation on time.
3.1.1. The Western Cape’s water situation
Western Cape Water Supply system has six major dams which make up about 99.6% of the total volume of water.
Cape Town's technique for tackling droughts is based on a warning framework that activates when dam water levels are below normal for a particular period in a year. There is very low rainfall around the major Theewaterskloof dam, about once in a decade. The last warning for low dam levels was in 2004 – 2005.
In 2007, the national Department of Water and sanitation gave a notice that Cape Town would need new water sources by 2015. The city considered the notice important and acted rapidly.
It enforced a management strategy to curb the water demand which involved pressure management, water meter replacements, free plumbing repairs for indigent households and leak detections. The strategy resulted in curbing the water demand and city was able to reach its 2015- 2016 water saving target three years early. As a result the deadline was moved to 2019 based on nominal water use and normal rainfall.
3.1.2. Bad decisions
National government is responsible for allocating water for agriculture to the farmers. In 2015, around 40% of the water from Western Cape's water supply system was allocated to agriculture and livestock and the rest was given to Cape Town.
The drought began to affect the city's dam levels significantly, still the national Department of Water and sanitation did not take any corrective steps to curb the water use by farmers in 2015 – 2016. The department failed even further as it was evident from the fact that it had granted too much water for agriculture in the Western Cape. This resulted in increasing the demand for water beyond the actual supply and consumed Cape Town's safety buffer of 28 thousand megaliters.
Cape Town has been acknowledged for showcasing some of the world's best water saving levels, yet its supply dams have been affected by inappropriate grants of water to agriculture by the national government.
3.1.3. Calls for help
Owing to less rainfalls in 2015, the local government took preventive measures and demanded for R35 million from the national government in order to increase the water supplies by recycling the water and drilling boreholes. The national government refused the sanction as it claimed that water in the dams was still 75%.
In 2016, the national government decided to identify 5 municipalities of Western Cape out of the total 30 as drought disaster area (Cape town was not included). Even then the national government was unable to sanction the promised funds by 2017.
In response to this, the Cape Town Mayor requested directly to the Department of Water and Sanitation for disaster relief funding. This request was also put down claiming that Cape Town was "not yet at crisis level".
3.1.4. The root cause
Keeping in mind the above mentioned scenario, one can conclude that the national government's ignorance in releasing the adequate funds on time and wasteful and irregular expenditure resulted in mismanagement, debt and corruption in the national Department of Water and Sanitation.
If the national government had taken timely actions and water grants had been appropriate, Cape Town's water crisis could have been mitigated.
3.2 Climate Change
Scientists have claimed that climate change is the underlying reason behind many natural disasters like floods, droughts and hurricanes.
Increasing temperature and global warming around the world is resulting in droughts. Cape Town has a cycle of dry and wet years in the natural scenario, but increased global warming has significantly intensified the drought. The changing rain levels and temperature are a result of global climate change.
The officials of Cape town failed to identify the changing rainfall patterns and assumed that the rainfall patterns will remain similar to the past and will not change so drastically.
A decade ago, the authorities were warned that there will be a change in the climate with hot and drier weather, reduced stream f lows and less rainfall but the warnings failed to catch the attention. And the consequences of this have been felt by the city of Cape Town.
Despite the fact that the SAWS (South African Weather Service) rainfall arrangement has kept on deteriorating, its occasional rainfall estimates propose that the 2014-15 and 2015-16 seasons were not far underneath ordinary, and just in the second phase of the 2016-17 rainfall season did downpours fall beneath 75% of normal. The following graph clearly depicts that rainfall has been extremely lower in 2015- 2017, and the urban water demand has been higher in 2015- 2016 and lower in 2017. Also, agricultural water demand has been on a rise than the normal average and evapotranspiration was not different.
3.3. Population Growth and increased consumption
Increased water utilization because of rapid increase in population was another factor giving rise to this problem. Since 1995 the city's population has developed by 79%, from around 2.4 million to an expected 4.3 million in 2018. Over a similar period dam storing capacity has expanded by just 15%.