Attached in the link below please find an invite to a talk by Dr Ricky Murray on the topic “Demystifying Groundwater.
Related to this below are some extracts from the Executive Mayor’s Speech on 24 August regarding the City’s Water Supply – their actions and plans.
CITY OF CAPE TOWN
24 AUGUST 2017
EXTRACT FROM THE SPEECH BY THE CITY’S EXECUTIVE MAYOR, PATRICIA DE LILLE, AT THE FULL COUNCIL MEETING ON 24 AUGUST 2017
Key highlights:
- The Water Resilience Task Team has developed and executed plans to reduce water consumption and to augment the water supply system
- The City will invest over R2 billion in new desalination, ground water extraction and water reuse plants; and another R1,3 billion in operational costs in the next two financial years
- A new Water Resilience Advisory Committee, with experts from academia, the business sector, and NGO sector, was established to advise the Mayor and the City on water resilience
- The City has done R13,6 billion worth of business with BBBEE-compliant vendors in the past financial year – that’s 92,7% of the City’s purchase orders
- The City’s budget is placed under unnecessary strain due to increased levels of vandalism to community facilities and infrastructure
- The City spent R1 million to renovate the Hanover Park Clinic after it was vandalised. The clinic has a new tuberculosis (TB) wing
We have 22,5% useable water left in our dams.
The collective consumption of 629 million litres of water per day is 129 million litres above the target of 500 million litres per day needed to build reserves for the expected harsh summer ahead.
The City is undertaking a range of measures including large-scale pressure reduction as well as installing water management devices to restrict the usage at extremely high consumption properties across Cape Town to 350 litres per day.
Since July, we have sent more than 21 500 letters to excessive users. We are still seeing households where consumption per household was between 60 000 and 120 000 litres per month.
We are making progress in our plan to secure an additional 500 million litres of drinking water per day through alternative sources.
The City has been proactive about water demand management and we have in fact had water restrictions in place for the past 15 years as part of our water demand management which won an international award in 2015.
Restrictions were intensified from the beginning of 2016 as per the accepted technique during extended periods of low rainfall because without these restrictions, Cape Town we would have run out of water a long time ago.
This is the quickest and most cost-effective way to ensure that we stretch our water supplies.
Various programmes have been established over the emergency and tactical phases which run until the end of June 2018, and the strategic phase which runs from July next year onwards.
We received more than 100 submissions from the private sector in response to the Request for Information (RFI) process.
The proposed solutions offered include desalination at various scales, inclusive of container solutions, barges and ships, water reuse technology at various scales, aquifer and borehole options, engineering and infrastructure options.
Following technical scrutiny of the submissions, experts were able to determine, with a significantly higher degree of clarity, the feasibility of commissioning various options and the time it would take, if procured, to deliver the options.
Importantly, the technical experts were also able to improve understanding of the costs involved. An extensive procurement plan is now in place and procurement has commenced.
From information obtained from the RFI, along with expert work done by our consultants and own staff, we envisage that for the immediate phases, the capital expenditure over this financial year and the next financial year will be in the region of R2 billion and the operating expenses will be upwards of R1,3 billion.
The first tender was issued last week on 16 August 2017, and for the next several weeks the full number of tenders will be issued.
Bid specification committees have been appointed, the development of bid specifications is in progress, and the bids are registered on the demand register.
Each batch of tenders will be processed as quickly as possible. Council has provided the administration with permission to use emergency procurement mechanisms in order to ensure that Cape Town is able to achieve a safe supply of water.
Within the rules of the Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA), budgetary provisions for augmentation will need to be increased and reprioritised.
A variety of technologies will be introduced to augment the system and commissioning dates vary according to staging of procurement and complexities related to installation and site preparation.
For the immediate phases to get to the 500 million litres per day, 350 million litres will come from desalination, 100 million litres from ground water extraction, and 50 million litres from water reuse.
These augmentation schemes are in addition to planned augmentation of 10 million litres per day from the Table Mountain Group Aquifer and one million litres per day from the Oranjezicht Spring.
Where new water augmentation installations require licensing, inclusive of environmental authorisations and water use licences, these are being sought from the relevant competent authorities including the National Department of Environmental Affairs and the National Department of Water and Sanitation. Our officials have already made the two national departments aware of the extent of the authorisations that will be sought.
Our efforts to mitigate the impacts of the current drought will receive a boost, with the addition of R20,8 million towards the City of Cape Town’s emergency disaster relief.
The City has been informed by the National Disaster Management Centre in the Department of Cooperative Governance that an amount of R20,8 million will be transferred to the City of Cape Town for emergency disaster relief.
Council provided a mandate for the creation of a Water Resilience Task Team and the Section 80 Water Resilience Advisory Committee be established to provide input into the Water Resilience measures and advise the task team and the Executive Mayor accordingly.
We are moving as swiftly as we can to build a water-resilient Cape Town and again I want to assure councillors and the residents of our city that we will not allow a well-run city to run out of water.
End