Cape Town Will Run Out Of Water In Fewer Than 100 Days

Normal human behariour, waiting to seriously address a problem until it's a crisis.

http://www.iflscience.com/environment/cape-town-might-soon-become-the-first-city-in-the-world-to-run-out-of-water/

By Tom Halw
Jan. 18, 2018

With fewer than 95 days left before they run dry, Cape Town might become the first major city in the world to run out of water.

The coastal South African city has been battling droughts for nearly three years, amounting to the worst one in their history. It’s now seriously reaching crunch time. With little rain on the horizon, the city has now ordered its 3.7 million residents to drastically cut their water consumption, take short stop-start showers, not wash their cars, and flush toilets as little as possible. If they don't, all of their taps could be shut off by April.

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If the city fails to resolve the problem and secure alternative water sources, Capetonians will be forced to queue for their daily ration of water, no more than 25 liters (5.5 gallons), at numerous government-organized outposts around the city.

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There are a few factors driving this water crisis. The earlier part of the drought in 2015 was largely blamed on the El Niño weather pattern, however, as the situation continues to worsen, experts are now pointing towards poor city management, a growing urban population, and – you guessed it – climate change.

This Mad Max-like vision of “Day Zero” is daunting, and one that could become a more common sight around the world in the face of climate change. Scientists have estimated that North Africa and the Middle East will become so hot and dry they will be uninhabitable in the near future, even if every country meets its targets for the Paris climate agreement. Similar claims have been made about the Mediterranean suffering recurrent droughts. Most startling of all, one study found that nearly three-quarters of the world’s population will experience life-threatening heatwaves by the end of this century.

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Six weeks before the report above

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-12-08/will-cape-town-run-out-of-water

Will Cape Town Run Out of Water?
If “Day Zero” comes, the 4 million residents of South Africa’s second-biggest city will face a catastrophe.
By Michael Cohen
Dec. 7, 2017

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The city’s poor, who are wholly dependent on the municipal supply and have limited space to store water, have been the hardest hit.

Patricia Gxothelwa, 34, an unemployed resident of Imizamo Yethu township, about 12 kilometers south of the city center, has to use a bucket to collect water from communal taps a short walk away when the supply is cut off from the hillside shack she shares with her husband and four children. It’s an increasingly regular occurrence.

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Three straight years of poor rains typically occur less than once in a millennium, according to University of Cape Town climatologists Piotr Wolski, Bruce Hewitson and Chris Jack. It’s unclear what’s caused such extreme drought, though climate change is a possible factor and the city should brace itself for a recurrence, they said in a study published Oct. 6.

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While average daily consumption has plummeted to about 600 million liters (158 million gallons) of water a day from 1.1 billion liters a year ago, about half of households still aren’t adhering to the city’s usage targets. About 19,000 homes that have regularly exceeded their recommended quotas have had mandatory devices fitted to their inlet pipes that restrict them to 350 liters a day.

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