New CoCT water strategy

[Fuenkli]

What do you think about the new CoCT water strategy? I am concerned that we are not addressing it the right way.  It looks like we will never be able to go to an unconstrained consumption again. I think this is the wrong approach and jeopardizes the cities future prosperity. We should make as much water available to the customers as they want (obviously at a price). The way I read the document is that the water supply will remain below the demand line. 

http://resource.capetown.gov.za/documentcentre/Documents/City strategies%2c plans and frameworks/Cape Town Draft Water Strategy 2019 Public Participation.pdf

 

 

[Elbow]

I enjoyed reading that document and y’all should read it too.

Well done to CoCT for commissioning it.

its all very well to say people should be able to use as much water as they are willing to pay for, but practically the available storage capacity is inadequate so we’ll be constrained for years.  (Sydney - at the same latitude - has 5 years storage.  We have 2)

The TL;DR is that the city will invest in a number of new water sources like desalination, but intending to use them only when their WCWSs supply is inadequate.  The idea is to take the city from a 98% probability of supply security to 99.5%.

They allude to what I think is the Achilles heel - it is almost inevitable that the city will be expected to draw relatively less from the WCWSS in draught years to help out other users, which means the expensive reserve sources will be used more than expected.

i also have a niggly feeling that the per person usage stats don’t add up to the total usage properly - I’m going to work that out when i’m At my desk.

 

[Fuenkli]

1 hour ago, Elbow said:

its all very well to say people should be able to use as much water as they are willing to pay for, but practically the available storage capacity is inadequate so we’ll be constrained for years

I think the available storage capacity would be sufficient if we had enough desalination output to cover a substantial portion of our water demand. Fair enough it would take 2 years to build it but it could be done. According to the CoCT water strategy document the cost of water from desalination is below the present tariff we pay. 

[Guest]

23 minutes ago, Fuenkli said:

I think the available storage capacity would be sufficient if we had enough desalination output to cover a substantial portion of our water demand. Fair enough it would take 2 years to build it but it could be done. According to the CoCT water strategy document the cost of water from desalination is below the present tariff we pay. 

I heard a bird whisper in my ear that the desalination plant in the Cape Town Waterfront is not pushing all the water in can produce into the system, therefor they sell potable water to people with say water trucks.

[Guest]

19 hours ago, Fuenkli said:

It looks like we will never be able to go to an unconstrained consumption again.

That is an international trend, CoCT was just the first city to hit the international media hard.

Little titbit from Feb 2018: The 11 cities most likely to run out of drinking water - like Cape Town

Solution lies in desalination, salt waste wisely handled. 

We have been "trained" now to accept the higher cost for that. I like. 

With abundance of desalination, with plants able to come on-line / go off-line to save on running costs yet can produce during peak demands, I have no problem if someone wants to use as much water as they want, provided THEY pay for that.

But if that person / businesses uses constrained water resources wildly, I don't give a ___ that they can pay for it. At that point we are all equal. 

We as humans cannot continue to use water willy nilly as we please and demand our rights to have it.
Right to have drinking water yes, farmers the right to use water to plant and grow things, yes.
But no right to water gardens, wash cars / pavements, take 2-3 baths or shower for 2 hour a day etc. Some of our friends complained about that ... no jokes. 

[___]

15 minutes ago, The Terrible Triplett said:

We as humans cannot continue to use water willy nilly as we please and demand our rights to have it.

While I really really enjoy phillopsophical discussions... and I generally agree that at the moment we're about to fall off on the "rights" side of the rights/responsibilities horse ... access to water is a human right in our constitution

[Guest]

35 minutes ago, plonkster said:

... access to water is a human right in our constitution

Correct. Yet you still don't have the right to waste it, never when it is a shared resource, like we have in SA's cities.  

[Fuenkli]

6 hours ago, The Terrible Triplett said:

Yet you still don't have the right to waste it, never when it is a shared resource

but what if we generate so much drinking water with 100% clean energy (solar and wind) from the sea that even if we waste it there will always be enough? Is this not what we should aim for?  

[Guest]

8 minutes ago, Fuenkli said:

Is this not what we should aim for?  

Absolutely!!! It can be done, CoCT can raise the funds for I am sure the people will back it as SA Gov does not have the funds and the politoc's cannot have CoCT and surrounds to have more then the rest. The political parties cannot get involved.

The coupled that with people here who do not have the same thoughts as we have.

So yes, we must go for unlimited water for everyone, that the farming industry can boom too.

Safe abundance of water secures a solid society.

So what if we pay a bit more ... hold a moment, let me get the popcorn.  

No seriously, I fully support an abundance of water, that we can use it as we want with no regrets, as it goes back into the ocean, to be re-used over and over. But it will cost.

[Fuenkli]

2 minutes ago, The Terrible Triplett said:

But it will cost

desalination cost is now at 1 USD/M2!

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Fuenkli said:

desalination cost is now at 1 USD/M2!

Is that the rate for private or Gov? 

Today that is R 14.13 per cubic meter so that is wot R 0.01413c per liter?
We are still on 5-7kl so that would be R70.65-R 98.92 per month ... at that price add some profit CoCT.  

[___]

Desalination is also not a bottomless resource, even if you have enough energy. Removing fresh water from the sea generally means dumping the brine back into it, which makes the water in that area more salty. There are ways to deal with it, spreading the brine over a larger area and so on, but the point is that your output will always be constrained in some ecological manner, or to put that differently: You still have to live in some kind of balance with nature.

That is to say, the idea that one can generate water on levels that can sustain wastage is probably doomed