Cape Town is a coastal city that draws millions of tourists to experience the city, nature, biodiversity, and so much more (Sinclair-Smith, 2019). But, with all of the beauty and attractions of the city comes variable regional weather patterns and increasing changes in climate (ibid.). It is difficult for city officials and planners to adjust to these regional changes that involve many stakeholders and an intense understanding of the interconnectedness of all the involved systems. Even more difficult for the city of Cape Town was to juggle the social inequities that occurred during a historic three-year drought in 2015. Citizens residing in informal settlements were disproportionately impacted by the 2015-2018 drought, a risk that could perpetuate as water security is tested in this region again. Inequities faced by residents of informal citizens were tied to deep-rooted political and racial injustices from Cape Town’s history, and need significant policy and societal overhaul to fully address the issues occurring (Enqvist & Ziervogel, 2019). Tackling those issues in light of a historic drought seems daunting, so rather, I suggest several small scale multi-benefit adjustments to take steps in the right direction of improving water security for informal settlements. 

Weather and Climate

Cape Town is a coastal city only 27 m above sea level which has a warm and temperate climate, categorized as a “mediterranean” region and experiences patterns of winter rainfalls and dry summer months (Jack et al., 2016). The dry season typically lasts about five months between November and March, with wetter seasons occurring the other seven months between April through October (ibid.). In 2019, Cape Town’s yearly rainfall average was 788mm (31in) of rain, with the lowest being only 15mm (0.6in) in February and the highest 140mm (5.5in) in June (Cape Town Climate, 2019). Cape Town experiences fierce seasonal weather patterns that, when matched with climate change impacts and increasing variability of regional weather patterns, greatly impact the wet and dry seasons (Jack et al., 2016). 

Food and water security are risks that Cape Town must deal with over the coming years to sustainably plan for the city’s future, especially in light of changing regional climate patterns (Jack et al., 2016). Since both food and water are sourced from outside of city limits, there is a strong reliance on infrastructure and systems that bring these resources into the city (ibid.). Water infrastructure is a crucial role in water access within the city limits of Cape Town. The Water and Sanitation Department is the municipality that treats and distributes drinking water, as well as handles sanitation management (City of Cape Town, 2019). The public water system includes the major infrastructure of dams and pipes to distribute drinking water. This system includes “11 dams, 12 water treatment works, 500 pump stations, 130 reservoirs, and 23 wastewater treatment facilities” (ibid.). Additionally, the municipality must maintain the extensive pipeline system and water meters to allow distribution to run smoothly (ibid.). The reliance on the large infrastructure to provide water and sanitation needs is a possible risk in light of a changing climate. 

Climate change impacts are inevitably affecting all regions and instilling newfound problems adjusting to different weather patterns and impacts. These changes are creating new challenges for water management and other aspects of daily life. Cape Town is expected to face decreased rainfall and increased temperatures, among other changes, that will directly impact water security and access for the city (Jack et al., 2016). Additionally, climate models hypothesize that the Cape Town region will also experience an increase in dry summer conditions and shorter, wetter winters with more intense rains, but overall lower averages of rainfall (Sinclair-Smith, 2015). These climate change impacts can worsen the water availability in Cape Town, which has already begun experiencing severe water shortages. Specifically, because Cape Town relies on a system of dam catchments to capture runoff of the Hottentot Holland Mountain Range outside of city limits, the security of water access is atune to regional weather patterns (ibid.). 

Drought Conditions

In 2015, Cape Town experienced the beginning of a three-year historical drought (Alexander, 2019). Several influences created the drought environment, including below-average rainfall levels, sprawling urban areas with increasing population, and increasing water uses (ibid.). These mixing influences led to decreasing water access, with the reservoir levels falling from 97% capacity in 2014 to 71% in 2015, 60% in 2016, and 38% in 2017. (ibid.). The rapidly declining reservoirs led the government to enforce water access from an average of 200 L/day/person to 50 L/day/person to decrease water demand and attempt to sustainably reserve water throughout the dry summer season (ibid.). The dam levels continued to drop over 2018, with Day Zero approaching where the dams would have reached 13.5% capacity and the government would’ve turned off access to taps for 40 million people (Welch, 2018). The mass media attention that Cape Town received shed light on the desperate nature of the situation, and gave warning to other cities globally that similar situations might be in their future. However, there was a major group of Capetonians who were left out of the spotlight: those who live in informal settlements. 

Informal Settlements During the Drought

The drought disproportionally impacted the residents of informal settlements in Cape Town. Access to adequate amounts of water is a daily struggle for those in informal settlements, which was exacerbated by the drought. Citizens in informal settlements typically had access to 40 L/household/day in non-drought times (Brand, 2018). Additionally, each household could account for 4+ people, minimizing the water access per person (ibid.). The water in informal settlements is distributed by the Water and Sanitation Department through communal taps, where up to 25 households share a communal tap (ibid.). The informal settlement population makes up more than 20% of Cape Town’s population, but use just 4% of the distributed drinking water (ibid.). This inequality plays a huge role in the drought difficulties because the access to clean water in informal settlements was already below the government allocation during drought, the former being 40 L/day/household, and the latter 50 L/day/person (ibid.). This is a growing concern for future water crisis issues, as these informal settlements may feel the crisis in harsher ways than those who live within formal properties.

Solution: Small Scale Multi-benefit Adjustments

Major infrastructure projects in the informal settlements are difficult to plan because of the land designation. Typically, informal settlements are on land that is not zoned for housing, or the government cannot obtain the proper permits from private ownership or other geographical reasons (Enqvist & Ziervogel, 2019). The difficulties of constructing within the crowded settlements and inability to break down preexisting racial tensions in the region creates a difficult environment to instill any major social or infrastructure changes. Rather, I suggest that small scale multi-benefit adjustments should be utilized to level water access in informal settlements while major institutional changes can occur. Specifically, these small scale multi-benefit adjustments are focused on Khayelitsha, Cape Town’s largest informal settlement within city limits. 

Aquifer Drilling

Aquifer drilling in Cape Town instilled a heated debate between water managers and conservationists (Harrison, 2018). As Day Zero approached in 2018, city water planners and managers introduced aquifer drilling as a way to alleviate scarcity by widening their water portfolio. Increasing the amount of accessible freshwater could address the scarcity issues both overall and for those in the informal housing settlements. During the drought, the city issued licenses for extraction of 80 million liters of water from the Cape Flats Aquifer per day, 40 million from the Table Mountain Group Aquifer, and 40 million from the Atlantis Aquifer (Evans, 2018). However, conservationist were concerned that the Cape Flat Aquifers would suffer a biological and ecological backlash from over-extraction (Alexander, 2018). Officially, 222 drilling sites were reported within city limits, some within UNESCO Heritage sites which did not go through the environmental review procedures due to the urgency of the drought (Ibid.). Although this approach brought some relief in water access, it did not provide as much as anticipated due to water quality levels, treatment setbacks, and other problems (Ibid.). 

Although drilling aquifers was not the most environmentally sound addition to the Cape Town’s water portfolio, it could be utilized as a way to provide increased water to informal settlements increased for little to no additional costs. The water pumped out of the aquifers was not enough to sustain the typical city usage of 200 L/day/person, the extracted water instead of could be allocated specifically to the informal settlements (Harrison, 2018). Allocating water for the informal settlements would significantly lower the extraction levels and biological impacts when compared to the 80 million originally allocated. Additionally, by slowing the extraction rates, this will give more time to research the biological and ecological impacts of extraction. The amount of extracted water would be equated to supply informal settlements with the difference between the 40 L/day/household and achieving 50 L/day/person. Drilling sites were allocated in 2018 with one borehole created only ten miles away from Khayelitsha, by one of the cities water treatment plants, making it a feasible access point for providing aquifer water to Khayelitsha (Harrison, 2018). The next small scale adjustment to increased equity in the informal settlements would be utilizing water trucks.

Water Trucks

The crowded nature of informal settlements makes new infrastructure projects difficult to construct. Rather, using water trucks to bring in additional water — the allocation from the aquifers — could provide water in a timely and systematic manner. While some informal settlements exemplify the downfalls of water trucks, this process in informal settlements in Cape Town proved to be very beneficial. In the midst of the covid-19 pandemic, Cape Town has utilized water trucks to provide increased water access to informal settlements (Hyman & Alexander, 2020). If this process became systematic in Cape Town, the government could increase water security and access in the informal settlements for relatively little cost. The trucks would bring in the amount of allocated water from the aquifer extraction to increase available water per household. Additionally, the trucks could bring water to existing communal taps or other community meeting areas so that retrieving water would not be an increased burden. Bringing water to community meeting places would increase equity and access to water. Again, the close proximity of Khayelitsha to one of the existing boreholes ensures the process would not require increased infrastructure or lots of transportation. Creating a system of weekly water trucks also opens the door for improving sanitation practices in Khayelitsha. 

Improved Sanitation

Informal settlements lack proper and sufficient sanitation infrastructure (Babe, 2016). Different toilet types require certain levels of maintenance and upkeep that the government would be required to uphold, however, these tasks are often not fulfilled (ibid.). Linking sanitation maintenance to water allocation ensures weekly upkeep occurs. This is especially important in a settlement like Khayelitsha because the communal taps tend to be located within very close proximity to toilets. Improving sanitation upkeep would decrease the possibility of cross-contamination while ensuring the human right to clean water and facilities.  

Addressing the inequities in Cape Town informal settlements will require a systematic policy approach to increase equity and access for all. However, with changing climate and weather in the region, it is becoming increasingly important to address water security in Cape Town, including informal settlements. While major infrastructure projects are likely to be unachievable in a short timeframe, small scale adjustments can improve water access and provide several benefits. Using existing drilling infrastructure to allocate water from aquifers specifically to informal settlements can increase water access without putting additional pressure on an already stressed water system. Utilizing water trucks to bring water near communal taps and increasing water access will improve equity in informal settlements and provide water at the UN-recommended 50L/day/person. Finally, linking water trucks with sanitation will create better living standards and access to proper and clean toilets in informal settlements while also mitigation risk of water contamination. These small scale adjustments can improve equity and water scarcity in a hotter and drier Cape Town.

References:

Alexander, C. (2018). Cape Town’s Controversial Plan to Solve Its Water Crisis for Good. Gizmodo. https://earther.gizmodo.com/cape-town-s-controversial-plan-to-solve-its-water-crisi-1824140733

Alexander, C. (2019). A Year After “Day Zero,” Cape Town’s Drought Is Over, But Water Challenges Remain. CityLab. https://www.citylab.com/environment/2019/04/cape-town-water-conservation-south-africa-drought/587011/

Babe, A. (2016). There’s a Message for City Planners in Cape Town Plumbing Poll. https://nextcity.org/features/view/khayelitsha-cape-town-toilets-plumbing-poverty-data-collection

Brand, D. (2018). For Nearly 1 Million People in Cape Town, the Water Apocalypse Has Already Arrived. Global Citizen.

Cape Town Climate. (2019). South Africa Climate: Monthly Temp & Rainfall Chart. SA Places. https://www.places.co.za/html/temperaturegr.html

Enqvist, J. P., & Ziervogel, G. (2019). Water governance and justice in Cape Town: An overview. WIREs Water, 6(4), e1354. https://doi.org/10.1002/wat2.1354

Evans, J. (2018). Drilling on Cape Flats Aquifer starts as Cape Town dams dry up in drought | News24. News 24. https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/drilling-on-cape-flats-aquifer-starts-as-cape-town-dams-dry-up-in-drought-20180111

Harrison, A. (2018). Ecologists warn of risks of drilling aquifer | Faculty of Science. News 24. http://www.science.uct.ac.za/news/ecologists-warn-risks-drilling-aquifer

Hassell, C. (2020). Cape Town’s Water Crisis – What lessons can be learned? Cath Hassell, South Africa – ech2o. http://www.ech2o.co.uk/cape-towns-water-crisis-what-lessons-can-be-learned

Hyman, A., & Alexander, E. (2020). Food trucks used to deliver water to informal settlements in Cape Town. Sunday Times. https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2020-04-07-food-trucks-used-to-deliver-water-to-informal-settlements-in-cape-town/

Jack, C., Wolski, P., Steynor, A., & Lennard, C. (2016). Climate Change Projections for the City of Cape Town (p. 74). University of Cape Town. http://www.csag.uct.ac.za/~cjack/CSAG_CCT%20report.pdf

Morris, H. (2018). How Cape Town beat the worst drought in its history. The Telegraph. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/africa/south-africa/cape-town/articles/day-zero-averted-cape-town-drought/

Sinclair-Smith, K. (2015). Water demand management in Cape Town. Snapshot. (n.d.). Retrieved May 9, 2020, from https://nextcity.org/features/view/khayelitsha-cape-town-toilets-plumbing-poverty-data-collection

Steenkamp, T. (2020). With no space or water, Cape Town slum has little to face coronavirus. AFP. https://news.yahoo.com/no-space-water-cape-town-slum-little-face-152054693.html

Stockhorst, G. (2018). The Cape Town Drought since 2015—A short astrological analysis. Astrological World Map. https://astrologicalworldmap.com/2018/02/12/cape-town-drought-since-2015-short-astrological-analysis/

TimesLive. (2020). Second Covid-19 case in Khayelitsha as premier starts mask-making drive. TimesLIVE. https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2020-04-02-second-covid-19-case-in-khayelitsha-as-premier-starts-mask-making-drive/

Welch, C. (2018). Why Cape Town Is Running Out of Water, and Who’s Next. National Geographic News. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/02/cape-town-running-out-of-water-drought-taps-shutoff-other-cities/