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Cape Town conquers water crisis and beckons tourists to return

Source: Tourism Update, 20/11/2018


This is despite predictions that South Africa’s tourism capital
could have become the first major metropolis in the world to run
completely dry. The city’s rallying cry now is that it’s still
very much open for business and ready to welcome back visitors
after what has predictably been a dry season for its attractions
and accommodation venues.
The latest rainy period produced fairly good rainfall, bringing
dam levels up to far more acceptable levels. While restrictions on
daily water usage have been revised, some restrictions will remain
in place as a safeguard. Cape Town businesses have been very
successful in adapting how they use water and signage remains up
in hotels and attractions about how to limit water usage. Visitors
have been very accepting when it comes to playing a part in saving
water, as it’s viewed as the responsible thing to do.
I am based in Cape Town, am South African, and Area Director of
Sales, Marketing and Revenue Management at Protea Hotels by
Marriott and African Pride, Autograph Collection Hotels, and this
is a true reflection of the city’s ability to rise above
adversity. In fact, the potential long-term gains that the process
has afforded us could also provide vital lessons for other cities,
as the world moves increasingly toward the necessary
sustainability of our natural resources. This is about more than
water â€` we are a world-renowned travel destination, so
sustainability is always going to be a focus in our unique
attractions.
A leading international expert in environmental and natural
resources law and policy, based at the Stanford University Woods
Institute for the Environment in California in the USA, Professor
Barton Thompson has spent time in Cape Town lecturing on water
policy and is acquainted with both the city and its water crisis.
In an article written for Stanford Law School earlier this year,
he says Cape Town was a victim of its own success: “Cape Town is
ironically at greater risk because it has been excellent at
conservation.”
He adds that Cape Town has been a model city in reducing its per
capita water usage and has won awards for its green water
policies. However, this has also enabled growth of around one
million people moving to Cape Town over the past decade â€` without
looking for new sources of water. He cites numerous cities in
similar situations, in the US , Australia, Brazil, Venezuela,
India and China.
In 2017, and in preparation for the worst as Cape Town headed
toward its hot summer season, and with the overall intention to
drop demand, the City of Cape Town rolled out a disaster-
management plan, the end goal of which was to still be able to
provide its citizens with water even if its dams ran dry â€` the
notorious ‘Day Zero’ scenario and the name given to the City’s
public awareness and phased-in activation campaign.
The three main touch points were: making it through to the Cape’s
traditional winter rainfall season in mid-2018, managing the
remaining water in the dams with dam levels communicated via the
media daily, and devising systems and spending money on
infrastructure that would prioritise bringing on-stream water from
other sources such as reusable and groundwater, and the
installation of desalination plants.
As a result of the aggressive campaign, Capetonians restricted
their personal usage to 50 litres per day, took short showers over
buckets to catch and reuse water, recycled washing machine run-
off, flushed toilets once a day, drank bottled water and installed
water tanks wherever space and funds were available.
The City’s Communication Director, Priya Reddy, has been quoted as
saying: “It was the most talked-about thing in Cape Town for
months when it needed to be. It was not a pretty solution, but it
was not a pretty problem.”
As a result, the city’s water usage dropped from 600 million
litres per day in mid-2017 to 507 million litres per day by April
2018. We really did need to make it alarming enough to ensure a
water status turnaround!
The campaign also really made us as hoteliers think twice about
water. As a nation and therefore as a city, we enjoy the challenge
to be resilient. When South Africans experienced the electricity
crisis a few years back, the lessons learnt became embedded in our
collective national psyche and we’ve become accustomed to
conserving energy. Likewise, for Capetonians, saving water has now
moved to a challenge we embrace daily as we hopefully mitigate
against ever finding ourselves in the same situation again.


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