"In Cape Town, Day Zero is Coming Very Soon- The Day the Water Runs Out"Published on January 19th, 2018 4:00pm - by the Los Angeles Times Written by Robyn Dixon This article is about the capital of South Africa, Cape Town and how it’s very quickly losing all of its water. Cape Town has been in a drought for 3 years and their day zero is getting closer and closer with each day that passes. With a population of about 4 million people and a dam capacity of only 15.2% of usable water, the residents of Cape Town have been limited to just 23 gallons per person, per household. By February, this number is expected to decrease to a mere 13 gallons.
Currently, Cape Town is in a very severe drought and is expected to run out of water by April 22nd. With little to no water in each home, people have begun to panic and question the government officials. Cape Town resident, Brigetti Lim Banda, said, “a lot of the logistics are not known… We just never get any answers, which tells us there’s no plan” and lots of people share her opinion. Crisis planning is at a bare minimum and there’s no plan for large families, disabled/handicapped people, and the plan that is in place has a lot of flaws. Many people blame the government and state officials for this ordeal, despite being a natural disaster, because they didn’t try to prevent this when they first learned how dire the situation was. Cape Town has officially been in a drought for three years however the situation wasn’t at critical levels until this past December. Since then, the day when there will be no more water has been calculated down to the very day. Right now it’s projected to be April 22, last week it was projected to be April 29, tomorrow it’s expected to be April 21st. The people of Cape Town rely on Theewaterskloof Dam which, in 2015, was at a water level of 77%. Seeing this article has shown me how dire the water situation is in this town. It makes me wonder what this means on a worldwide level, could this just be the beginning of a worldwide water shortage? I also believe the government could've done a lot more to prevent this huge ordeal. The government made the decision to ignore possible solutions like water-recycling, water-purification, and desalination because it seemed too costly at the time. Now, with very little water, what will happen to the 4 million residents? The government has dug a deeper hole for themselves by not providing the funds to fix the problem when it was fixable and now it's way out of hand. I will comment on Nia Asbill and Elizabeth Tran's blogs.
2 Comments
1/25/2018 10:08:46 pm
This situation shows a very dire and possibly growing situation. How do you think that this issue will affect the economics and population of Cape Town? Do you think that this drought could increase to a larger scale?
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Elizabeth Tran
1/26/2018 11:39:31 am
This does seem like a dire situation! I'm very concerned and I'm glad that your blog was able to inform me about it. I was wondering, though, are there any other organizations bring awareness to this problem/helping it?
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AuthorHi, I'm Elena Seitzinger and this is my blog! Welcome! Archives
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