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Comment on the City’s draft Long-Term Water Conservation and Water Demand Management Strategy

We are updating our Water Conservation and Water Demand Management (WC/WDM) Strategy, and we want your input.

Comment Period: 25 April 2025 – 25 May 2025

Phases

Phases overview

Phase 1: Comment on the City’s draft Long-Term Water Conservation and Water Demand Management Strategy

Comment on the City’s draft Long-Term Water Conservation and Water Demand Management Strategy

Comment on the City’s draft Long-Term Water Conservation and Water Demand Management Strategy

25 April 2025 22:00 - 26 May 2025 22:00

About

The City’s current Water Conservation and Water Demand Management (WC/WDM) Strategy was initially approved in 2007 and updated in 2015/16.

We are updating the current strategy to ensure the long-term balance between available water resources and water demand and to optimise water use efficiency.

The key goals for the next 10 years are:

Goal A: The City must by 2034/35 reduce and maintain the non-revenue water (water that is lost and not paid for) by volume to below 20% of water supplied, from 28.1% (2023/2024).
Goal B: The City must by 2034/35 reduce and maintain water consumption to below 150 litres per person per day of total potable water supplied, from 157 litres per person per day (2023/2024).
Goal C: The City must ensure and maintain ongoing effective management systems and water use efficiency measures.
Goal D: The City must maintain WC/WDM as one of the key water service delivery strategies, and must give priority to its implementation and ensure an ongoing adequate enabling environment.
Goal E: The City must reduce the projected drinking water demand to an average growth rate of no more than 1% p.a.

Once approved, the strategy will update and replace the Water Conservation and Water Demand Management Strategy (2015/16).

In terms of section 17 of the Local Government: Municipal Systems Act, Act 32 of 2000, you can submit comments to the municipality in respect of the draft strategy.

You can also access the information at:

City libraries
Subcouncil offices
In the document download section below

Contact us

For more information and general enquiries about the draft strategy, contact:

Ivy Maisela

Email:

ivy.maisela@capetown.gov.za

Nokuzola Mhlungu

Email:

nokuzola.mhlungu@capetown.gov.za

Water Conservation and Demand Strategy Advert (English).pdf

(105.3 KB)

Water Conservation and Demand Strategy Advert (isiXhosa).pdf

(106.8 KB)

Water Conservation and Demand Strategy Advert (Afrikaans).pdf

(103.0 KB)

Long-Term Water Conservation and Water Demand Management Strategy, 2007.pdf

(1.9 MB)

3 issues

Martina Gluckman1 year ago Dear Sir/Madam I hereby formally submit my comments on the proposed water strategy. Attached please find my detailed comments. As an eco-consultant with years of experience in training and implementing water efficiency measures, I have worked extensively to promote sustainable water use across residential, commercial, and hospitality environments. My expertise lies not only in optimizing water efficiency but also in driving behavioral change among staff in businesses and organizations to ensure long-term conservation practices. I appreciate the initiative to address water sustainability and would be happy to contribute further by providing for instance course material tailored to tackling inefficient water use and fostering responsible consumption habits. Please do not hesitate to reach out if additional insights or collaborative efforts are needed to support the strategy’s objectives. I look forward to engaging in this important discussion and hope my recommendations will be of value. Best regards, Martina Gluckman

Henri du Toit1 year ago

Gino Bougaardt1 year ago 1. BUDGET FOR WC/WDM Table 3 (Overall Budget for WC/WDM) on page 10: What is attributed to the significant budget dip of R1395 Million and R1279 Million for financial years 2028/29 and 2029/30 respectively from previous financial years before increasing again in the 2030/31 financial year? Will this reduction in budget not put the WC/WDM strategy at risk? Please elaborate since no explanation is given? 2. SEASONAL TRENDS Figure 2 (Seasonal trends 2021-2024) on page 19/20: There is data missing (red line) for the 2023/2024 graph - the graph is incomplete. Please supply data from March to July as well for comparative purposes. 3. MY PROPOSITION Table 9 (Assessment of available water conservation interventions) on page 35: Most of the negative impacts, of the interventions, are that they are expensive, hard to control and enforce. I propose a shift in regard to “consumer metering” (the first intervention) where the negative impact listed in table 9 is that it is “expensive to maintain and read meters on a regular basis”. According to the CoCT website article “Logging your own water meter readings is a click or call away” (dated 28 April 2022) at https://www.capetown.gov.za/Media-and-news/Logging%20your%20own%20water%20meter%20readings%20is%20a%20click%20or%20call%20away, only about 2900 residents submit there own water meter readings to the CoCT from September 2021 to March 2022. I think it is worth considering allowing customers, in neighbourhoods/areas/high usage businesses etc (section 5.4.2 - commercial/business and section 5.4.3 - industry on page 31), where water usage is high, to submit their own water meter readings to the CoCT on a monthly basis. This process requires them to take action and can increase customer awareness and education of water usage and hopefully prevent apathy - allowing customers to take action can prevent apathy and make them take responsibility. Note that customer apathy is one of the negative impacts for the “customer education and awareness” intervention in table 9 on page 35. Furthermore, provide these high usage customers with incentives (e.g. financial discounts or otherwise) to lower their water demand and not only penalties or fines for non-compliance. A more balanced approach of customers taking action, incentives and penalties can help customer awareness and education that can have a positive effect on lowering the water demand usage. It is good that the CoCT has consumer awareness campaigns (Goal B1: Promote the efficient use of water to consumers and customers under table 12 on page 48), but the effective ones will be those campaigns that require physical action by the consumers or customers. You learn and information sinks in by doing, by taking action. Hence, focus much more time and budget on those campaigns that require greater consumer and customer engagement. To this point, I think that under Goal D (Resources and Funding on page 66), that funding for the awareness and education campaigns should have there own Objective and Programme e.g. D3 in table 15. They should not be minimised and lumped, it appears to me, under section D1.1.1, D1.2.2 and D1.2.4. If the CoCT is taking this seriously then appropriate funding should be provided to these campaigns - flesh the resources out. It gives the appearance, thus far, that the campaigns listed under Goal B1 might not be taken seriously. An added benefit to my proposition is that fewer CoCT meter readings are required by CoCT staff and by meter reading contractors (Goal A: section A4.6 - Management of meter readings on page 46) thus reducing overall costs. If high water usage areas are in poorer communities then develop a more simplistic information technology system like free SMS/WhatsApp/App service that is cheap/free, easy to use and understand that requires minimal effort to execute from a customer perspective. Maybe slip this in under Goal A (table 11 on page 41) under Low-income areas section A2.1.5 - A2.1.8, especially under A2.1.8 (Metering and monitor consumption).

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