Cape Town Day Zero

Cape town is on the verge of running out of ground water totally. It was expected to run out of water on 4th July 2018, a day which was being referred to as Day Zero. But by cutting water usage it was able to delay that fate for an year at least.

I believe that this is only the first example of a major urban center running out of a basic utility like water.And with climate change as a looming threat it is expected that a many more cities will drift towards this disaster gradually. Water shortage can change the whole urban ecosystem, by shutting down the industries and disrupting domestic life. So this makes it a serious threat for future cities, and thus a practical solution to this problem is of utmost significance.

A few ingenious solutions to the Cape Town crisis have been proposed apart from cutting the water usage generally. I will discuss two of them. First one is to literally tow a huge iceberg to the coast of South Africa, and use it to replenish the water. Due to some obvious difficulties in the logistics of the idea, it will require a budget of about 10 million dollars.

The second solution is introduced by a nonprofit that sprang out in South Africa in 2015. It distributes water purification systems to grocery stores encouraging them to turn dirty water to drinking water. And a central station monitors the distribution units through an embedded SIM card, so shopkeepers pay for each gallon of dirty water they purify and sell.

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