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  • 2017-08-21 (xsd:date)
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  • Do formal residents use 65% of Cape Town’s water, with half going to gardens & pools? (en)
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  • This article is more than 5 years old Cape Town’s wet winter is much drier than usual and city officials are pleading with residents to help build up the city’s water reserves . Reporting on the dire state of affairs, news agency GroundUp discussed a number of the city’s projects to conserve water. The article highlighted that 65% of [city] water goes to formal residential customers. Half of that is used for non-essential purposes – filling pools, watering gardens, washing cars and so forth. With dams supplying the city currently only 31.1% full ( 21.1% of this being usable ), are these reported consumption figures accurate? We set out to check. Stats came from mayoral committee member To get the source of the statement, Africa Check spoke to the article’s author, Lilly Wimberly. Wimberly told us the data was provided by councillor Xanthea Limberg’s office. Limberg is the city’s mayoral committee member for informal settlements, water and waste services, and energy. She gave Africa Check a breakdown of the city’s water consumption patterns by category for the financial years 2015/16 and 2016/17. At last count , the city was using 610 million litres of water per day. The city’s water consumption data shows that residential units (69.9%) used the majority of supplied water. The bulk of this residential consumption was in formal settlements (64.5%), while informal settlements accounted for 3.6% of the consumption. But how is this water use determined? Limberg explained to Africa Check that the city has at least one meter [for] all formal developed stands and we have accurate information on the land use and land zoning of each stand therefore we are able to determine consumption levels per land use category. Africa Check spoke to Prof Heinz Jacobs, a director at Stellenbosch University ’s Institute for Water and Environmental Engineering . He pointed us to a study he co-authored on the water saving achieved following water restrictions the City of Cape Town implemented in 2004 . The study compared individual water meter readings from the City of Cape Town’s treasury system. Readings before water restrictions (1 October 2003 to 1 April 2004) and during water restrictions (1 October 2004 to 1 April 2005) were collected. The researchers grouped their findings into four land use categories, namely residential (single standing dwellings), industrial, commercial and institutional, other (including group housing, flats and farmland) and unknown. The study found that water use in the residential category accounted for 55.1% of total water use during the 2003/2004 period and 54.2% of total water use during the 2004/2005 period. ( Note: Water use fell by approximately 14% following the restrictions .) Because of this, Jacobs notes that the 65% figure the City of Cape Town provides is plausible because we did not include flats in our sample set... [the city] lists flats and complexes as 9.2% and 9.5% of the total, so give or take a few minor errors I will believe the 65% without arguing about it. (en)
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