H 2 Zero – How Climate Change Continues to Raise Concerns Surrounding a Lack of Water in Drought-Sensitive Regions

Picture taken in Cape Town, in the historic neighborhood of Bo-Kaap.

By Alanna Kinnebrew

After spending the Christmas 2018 holiday in multiple airports traveling, with over seventeen hours of flight time, and one very long layover in Heathrow Airport, we finally touched down in Cape Town! I’ve never been so excited to get off of a plane before, and that’s saying a lot since I love visiting new cities. But after a tiresome two days of travel, reaching Cape Town, South Africa sent a surge of relief as well as excitement for the adventure that awaited. A few college friends and myself made a pact to travel to a new country every 3 years and South Africa was our first destination of choice. I had done some research and knew that Cape Town had water issues, but I was in for a surprise as to how life there was affected by the water scarcity.

Prior to the trip I’d done some research on the city, mainly to get some ideas about all the sights to discover and make an attempt at booking tours and excursions in advance. One thing was made clear in my search, Cape Town was very much in the midst of a drought. There were constant reminders to make sure tourists understood the severity of this crisis and respected the water use restrictions while visiting. No matter where we were, the airport, restaurants, and even the hotel, there were signs posted for patrons to reduce and conserve water use. At home, we’re used to seeing signage in the bathroom stalls reminding you to only flush toilet paper #WipesClogPipes, but here you would find the phrase, “If it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down.” Catchy right?

In person, it seemed like it was business as usual, well, besides the constant bathroom reminders and the brown, dried up grass; but the dried lawn is typical in any hot summer climate. As an on looker, you would never know from the outside looking in that Cape Town and its 4 million residents were on the verge of hitting Day Zero – a projected day in which all six of the main water reservoirs that supply drinking water to the city would drop below 13.5% of capacity.

The hotel did request that guests take shorter showers and limit toilet flushing to once or twice a day only if it was no longer “mellow, yellow.” However, they did take additional precautions behind the scenes that I soon became aware of. They installed water restricting disks or restrictor plates into some shower heads. This disk creates a blockage to reduce the flow of water which in turn provides a low-pressure shower for its users. Unknowingly, I called the front desk to alert them of this “issue” of low water pressure I was experiencing while attempting to take a shower. In my mind, I thought I was taking a longer shower than recommended because of the low water pressure so I wanted to do my part to speed up the process. I was told that maintenance would come and look at it and try to resolve my request the same day. I allowed two days to pass and still no resolution, so I assumed they must have forgotten. I called back and spoke with another agent at the front desk and he proceeded to ask me where I was from. Confused, I answered that I was from the States and his response was, “Ah that makes sense, I’ll send someone up right away.” I thought it strange because I simply let him know that I’d previously called and I didn’t believe anyone came by. It didn’t seem like an inappropriate request at the time. Moments later, maintenance arrived and to my surprise he proceeded to remove the disk from the shower head. It wasn’t until after my trip, and with some additional research, that I realized the reason behind it all.

The Western Cape province of South Africa had encountered a three consecutive year dry spell that had taken a toll on its water reservoirs and action needed to be taken, otherwise there would be nothing left. In October of 2017, city officials began reducing the pressure within the water distribution systems as well as cutting water off intermittently to homes and businesses. The goal was to reduce overall water use to only 23 gallons per person per day. This was just the beginning of various enforcements the city would enact in an effort to reduce water use. It was an urgent matter that needed addressing especially when the reservoirs were almost 72% full in 2015 and 61% full in 2016. By October 2017, the water declined down to 38.5% leaving the city in search of new measures to take in an attempt to reduce water consumption across the city.

Initially, Cape Town installed water management devices (WMD) in homes. These devices are programed to provide a daily allocation of water for low-income households. It was a method used to help regulate ones’ water bill and keep it at a moderate rate that was affordable to whomever needed the assistance. At
least a couple of water utilities in the United States have a similar practice. For those who qualified in Cape Town, the utility would also provide an additional allocation of water to these households free of charge, on top of what was already included in every customers’ base charge. These WMDs were soon looked at for not only assisting low-income households, but now were being installed at households with repeated excessive high-water use. At one point, the city was installing almost 2,000 devices per week to restrict the flow of water and curtail consumption. As Cape Town’s water reservoirs got lower and lower, the city had to begin taking action towards enforcing their household water limit. The technology was already readily available, so why not mitigate risk and put it to good use?

Today, Cape Town is no longer under such extreme water restrictions, but what’s there to say that this crisis won’t happen again?  Or better yet, have other drought-prone cities around the world learned from the challenges that Cape Town faced, and are they preparing for a more sustainable future? Studies show that due to climate change, climate systems are no longer predictable based on past variations in the climate and cannot be considered to be a limit to what the current and future climate system can exceed. This is not a concern that can be seen as a complication that will take place in the distant future, rather, it is a problem that will continue to test our preparedness.

The gradual increase in global temperatures can be particularly problematic for sensitive regions. Climate change has paved a future for higher temperatures, less precipitation in some areas, and the need for more adaptation measures to reduce current vulnerability. Day Zero had little resonance for two groups of people: those who were already dealing with a lack of access to water and those who are wealthy enough to afford to hire well drillers in order to gain access to fresh underground water on their own property. With growing population comes an increase in water demand, but the changing climate reduces that supply. Perhaps the greatest lesson learned from this situation is that our mitigation tactics cannot wait for another Day Zero to come. These are no longer “potential threats”, but have come a reality that many more will have to face in the near future. So, ask yourself, what are we doing to prepare?