The City of Cape Town’s mayor, Helen Zille, is leading by example and has adopted the attitude of monitoring her household water consumption. Cape Town has received far lower than usual rainfall this winter which will lead to severe water restrictions this summer.
Source: City of Cape Town
To help save water, Executive Mayor Helen Zille had a new City water management device installed in her home this week. The device provides a specific daily amount of water to her household.
So far, the devices have been installed in over 30 000 homes throughout Cape Town free of charge (on a voluntary basis, and after consultation with owners) to help residents avoid running up huge bills through excessive use or leaks. They are set to switch on at a fixed time every morning and only switch off once the household has used its set quota of water for the day.
If households use less than their quota in a day the amount that isn’t used is carried over to the next day. For example, if only 250 litres are used in one day, the balance of 100 litres is carried over to the next day, giving the household a total of 450 litres for that day.
The device ensures that households receive their free 6 000 litres of water per month, and also allows them to increase this to an additional amount according to what they commit to paying.
