Western Cape drought situation by area- from a tourism perspective

Speaking at today’s (January 9) briefing, Cape Town Mayor, Patricia de Lille, said the city’s new ‘day zero’ is April 22.

That is the day when nearly all the taps will run dry. Daily water consumption remains above the 500 million litres a day target while dam storage levels have fallen below 30%. However, if each and every one of us make sure that we use less than 87 litres of water per day‚ we can stretch the little bit of water that we have even longer.”

Present indications are that the city will get 80 million litres a day from the Cape Flats aquifer‚ 40 million from the Table Mountain aquifer and 30 million from the Atlantis aquifer.

De Lille added that the city was expecting two of its four new desalination plants to start providing water from March.

Below are the water restrictions for Western Cape Municipalities, according to the Western Cape Government website, at time of publication

• Beaufort West Municipality - level 3
• Bergrivier Municipality - level 2
• Bitou Municipality - level 1
• Breede Valley Municipality - level 3B
• Cederberg Municipality - level 2
• Cape Agulhas Municipality -  no restrictions
• City of Cape Town – level 6
• Drakenstein Municipality - level 4
• George Municipality - level 2B
• Hessequa Municipality - level 2
• Kannaland Municipality - level 3
• Knysna Municipality - level 3
• Laingsburg Municipality - level 1
• Langeberg Municipality - no restrictions
• Matzikama Municipality - level 2
• Mossel Bay Municipality - level 1
• Overstrand Municipality - no restrictions
• Oudtshoorn Municipality - level 1
• Prince Albert Municipality - level 1
• Saldanha Municipality – level 5
• Stellenbosch Municipality – level 5
• Swartland Municipality - level 3
• Swellendam Municipality - no restrictions
• Theeswaterskloof Municipality - level 3
• Witzenberg Municipality - level 3

The government website adds; The province is supplied with water by 44 main dams. These dams collectively hold a maximum storage capacity of 1870.4 million cubic metres. To date, many of the dams in our province have reported levels drastically lower than levels recorded at the same time during previous years. The average storage across the province on January 4, 2018, is 29.1%.”

Breakdown of water restriction levels:

Level 1

Level 2

Level 3

Level 4

Level 5

Level 6

Source: Tourism Update 9 January 2018