City of Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa – Planned Raw Water Augmentation is adding 7% to the City’s drinking water supply
In 2019, after the 2014 – 2018 drought crisis, the Cape Town City Council approved our Water Strategy, “our shared water future”.
The strategy includes five commitments:
- Safe access to water and sanitation for ALL
- Wise Water Use through pricing, regulation, active citizenship, network management.
- Sufficient, reliable water from diverse sources.
- Shared benefits and managed risks from regional water resources
- Water Sensitive City by 2040.
The City of Cape Town seeks to increase its water supply by 300 million litres (79 million gallons) per day by 2030.
Water reuse is included in multiple water sources (surface water, groundwater and desalination) which will contribute to our total water supply, in line with the third commitment of the Water Strategy.
The Faure New Water Scheme is a 70 million litre (18 million gallon) per day Water Reuse Scheme. The plant will source treated effluent from Zandvliet Waste Water Treatment Plant and put this through an advanced water purification process to produce drinking quality water. The water will then be blended with dam water to augment the water that feeds the existing Faure Water Treatment plant, the City’s largest water treatment plant, and then distributed into the Cape Town Water Supply.
The project is currently in the planning and design phase. First water production is estimated to be in 2030/31.
Water reuse, in particular, has the potential to change our city’s water security dramatically, as we look to this source to add around 7% to our total bulk drinking water supply by 2040.