Except that this is precisely what has NOT been happening. And exactly WHY there is a problem. When all the blaming by the DA is said and done (ANC and evil residents who use too much) the bottom line is that as administrators of the city (and the province) have known about the water crisis since at least 2009 and done nothing. Nada. Zip. Zero. Nothing. So ultimately blame rests with them. May their chickens come home to roost at last and the PR facade can fall.
The DA are to blame. But as stated in a couple of posts above this, the blame game is going to achieve absolutely nothing than get us riled up. If we had good rains the last two years all that would have happened is the DA would have carried on as per usual as all their plans to increase capacity were all shelved until 2020 or in the case of the Table Mountain Group Ground Spike I read 2024, better sooner than later as the crises could have been worse. At least we still have some water to save.
Hermanus 120km from Cape Town installed their ground spike in 2011 and they don't have water restrictions now. The City put their plan out to 2024 and who knows with these Municipalities, my experience is once a plan is shelved it can stay their for a lot longer than envisaged.
In regards to dates. The first set of water restrictions were instituted in the 2000/1 cycle, the second set of heavy water restrictions was 2004/5 when the Cape dams went to 25%. People forget, but during those two cycles gardeners were the target again with punitive measures. The difference then and now was that the rain fell a year or so later and we went back to full dams again after winter and all was forgotten. The only difference was The City coined a bucket load of money from the tariffs they enjoyed and once again I will say it here, it was all about the revenue stream back then and since then whenever the levels were implemented.
January 2017 saw the change in the revenue stream when Level 3B was instituted and since we are now on Level 4 and a few days ago Level 5, revenues is all but dried up for the City.
They cannot be making too much of a profit any more since the whole crises has gone viral and here lies another difference, it did not go viral in 2000/1 and 2004/5, it was business as usual.
We must never forget The City of Cape Town is a business like any other.
My input into anything that is Ratepayer related ended about 5 years ago when I finally realised that myself and The City are not on the same page. Their Ward Councillors would rather drink tea with the local ladies club than ever do anything constructive and the word proactive is a joke. The current Ward Councillor is now in his 4th term in office and if I can think of one thing he has been proactive about, nothing comes to mind.
The only time anyone cares about something in our area is if it directly relates to their immediate road or surroundings, for the rest they drive around with blinkers, the Councillor with an extra thick pair of blinkers.
I do my own thing, avoiding the Councillor and dealing directly with Council themselves if there is anything that needs attention.
Looking around The City must be spending Billions on the IRT/BRT bus development with some serious road upgrades. Until January this year I reckon a significant amount of money was skimmed from the water revenue to pay for it all, today I don't think so.
The City broke the water for us and for themselves. There is no buffer water left for gardening and no surplus funds from water to fund all the City's projects. We are all losers here.
But on the positive note, we are all learning valuable lessons on how to manage our water properly in the house and also what alternatives there are for the garden and perhaps that is where we should be.
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