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Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 03 February 2011
The maximum consumption that SA’s water resources can sustain will be reached in about five years, warns Engineering Council of SA vice-president Thoko Majozi.
 Garden Rhapsody. A grey water solution by Water Rhapsody. With floods causing havoc in seven provinces, it may be hard to believe that a water shortage of crisis proportions is looming. The maximum consumption that SA’s water resources can sustain will be reached in about five years, warns Engineering Council of SA vice-president Thoko Majozi.
“We have known for decades that SA will run out of water,” says Majozi. “It’s time everyone recognised that we live in a water-scarce country.”
So scarce that SA is the world’s 30th-driest country, says Jeremy Taylor, founder of water conservation company Water Rhapsody. He adds that SA has less water per person than its drier neighbours Botswana and Namibia.
SA has seen a little of what a prolonged drought can do in the Western Cape, where towns such as Sedgefield, Mossel Bay and Knysna have resorted to costly seawater desalination to stave off disaster.
But that’s nothing compared to what is heading Cape Town’s way, warns Taylor. He explains that the La Niña climate pattern causing floods in the northern provinces will have the reverse effect in the winter rainfall area. Continue reading Water shortage of crisis proportions looms
Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 29 July 2010
Phosphate is a nutrient that is essential for plant growth and is found naturally in the environment. But the excess use of phosphates by humans is overloading our water bodies, which can lead to [...]
Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) - partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 19 June 2010
By 2012 Cape Town will be out of water. This is not conjecture.
As early as 1995 Professor Bryan Davies, then Head of the fresh Water Research unit at UCT, predicted that Cape Town would be dry by 2013. Not bad from as far back as that.
 Theewaterskloof is the biggest supply dam to Cape Town Over the six past decades, there has been a drought cycle every six to seven years. The last time Cape Town was in a drought was 2004. I have watched this in Cape Town since 1965 when I can first remember the newspapers reporting the dam levels every day, and this has been the case to a greater or lesser extent for the past forty years.
We have always been able to augment further supply by building an additional dam, but not so anymore. There is not another single place or any more river water that can possibly be found anywhere in the Western Cape for augmenting supply. The Western Cape is simply dammed out of water. The rest of the country is in no better condition, so we cannot go looking elsewhere to steal this precious resource.
Two ways of augmenting supply to Cape Town have recently been mooted by the minister of DWA (Department of Water Affairs) Buyelwa Sonjica, viz. the desalination of sea water and pumping water out of the Table Mountain aquifer. Simply put, both of these augmentation systems are not sustainable, and should not and must not be pursued. The former is too energy hungry, and the latter means pumping fossil water from the TM aquifer. Clearly these are not options for a way of finding water for Cape Town.
What is studiously being ignored by Minister Sonjica is our ability to use less water, as well as ways to augment our own supply. Minister Sonjica will not be found encouraging citizens to harvest water; mainly because this would not mean any revenue for her department. Continue reading Cape Town out of Water by 2012
Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) - partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 31 May 2010
IMBY (In My Back Yard), a community-oriented environmental awareness organization, held their ‘Join the Poo Parade’ protest at the Disa River mouth on Hout Bay Beach last Sunday.
Jeremy Westgarth-Taylor of Water Rhapsody Conservation [...]
Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) - partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 21 February 2010
Not one of one of Cape Town’s 26 sewerage plants is working properly. The problem is not so much the quantity of waste that the Mother City’s burgeoning population produces, but rather the volume of water used to transport that waste to the processing plants.
 Blue-Green algae deposits at Zeekoeivlei “There is just too much water arriving at these plants,” says Jeremy Westgarth-Taylor, who has studied the water situation in South Africa over the past 16 years, and is a past winner of a WWF Green Trust Award.
Mr Westgarth-Taylor was addressing guests at a recent “Green Drinks”, a monthly event at which Hout Bay residents share ideas about topical environmental issues.
According to Mr Westgarth-Taylor, the catastrophic poisoning, in 1997, of Wildevoelvlei, the series of pans between the sea and Imhoff’s Gift estate in Kommetjie, was a case in point. A highly toxic blue-green bloom (thought to be algal) formed on the surface of the lakes as a result of wastewater overflowing from a nearby water treatment works. The treated and untreated water had a high concentration of phosphates – a major component of washing powder. To prevent the “blue-greens” from reproducing, SANParks had to turn the lake anoxic (without oxygen), thereby killing an entire generation of organisms.
Even more alarmingly Mr Westgarth-Taylor claims Cape Town has exhausted all damming opportunities on local rivers. Theewaterskloof Dam, which draws on the Dutoits and Riviersonderend rivers, Voelvlei, which drains the mountains west of Tulbagh, and Steenbras Dam above Gordon’s Bay together supply close to 700 million cubic metres to the metropole. Despite the addition of the Berg river scheme just last year the area’s demand for water will out-strip supply in just two years, he says. Continue reading Too much water going to waste – expert
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