Some perspectives on the Water Crisis💧

In Cape Town, South Africa Capetonians have been told that their water is running out, making local and international headlines, and people have been told that ‘Day Zero’ - when the taps or faucets could be turned off - is now set to occur on 21 April 2018. There is speculation that if this crisis continues that a it could be possible that people will only be able to get their water at certain water points around the city under armed police guard.

Cape Town receives more than a million tourists per year which is not bad for a city that has a population of about 3.5 million people. Many tourists have already cancelled their bookings and websites are reporting that it would be possible that people would be required to have short showers or baths and that hot water may not be available.

Now I would like to point out that in my humble opinion that this is not so much a water crisis as it is a management and leadership dilemma. I'm going to list some thoughts and documentation substantiating this claim and also propose some solutions.

Now one of the first thing that I noticed was how quickly this news was politicised and became a battleground for various political parties each accusing the other for being responsible for this disaster. The national government has been blamed for failure of not planning ahead for maintaining and expanding the storage and supply infrastructure. The local government is being blamed for not recognising this crisis early enough and delaying intervention which has compounded the situation. With all the media attention and finger pointing that's been happening it seems to me that 'Day Zero' has become a 'Zero Day' exploit to ruffle feathers and blame certain individuals for this situation.

It should be noted that Cape Town is one of the areas of South Africa which has not got the majority of voters from the ruling ANC (African National Congress) party and is currently being managed by the DA ( Democratic Alliance).

Below is a link to a newspaper article published in 1990 warning of a water shortages in 17 years - either the journalist is a talented psychic or this issue has been ignored for a long time. I suspect would force the government to deploy expensive and patented water desalination technology in a rush without any opposition which would then lock out any innovators and entrepreneurs from solving this in a sustainable and organic way.

Published in 1990. 😠😤 Bloodywell rubbishes 😠😤 #WaterCrisis pic.twitter.com/S6ZfdSsgYK
— Brandon Booysen (@Boyas112) January 26, 2018

Here is a letter the Department of Water received from the City of Cape Town where their assistance was rejected in building desalination plants - I have mixed feelings about the use of proprietary patented water purification technologies but when a city is facing a urgent situation like this shouldn't the government be more willing to listen to the Department of Water and at least let them proceed with costings and other due diligence procedures? I would personally like to see a mixture of technological solutions to this crisis and would investigate using water from the underground aquifers and build at least one desalination plant to asses both solutions effectiveness and then the City would be able to make more informed decisions in the future about which solution is the very best fit based on a hard factual evidence? Failure to include everyone in the solutions debate risks sidelining certain probable solution providers and not get into a battle of words and so called 'facts'.

There are obviously lots of different opinions about which direction the government should take - this will ultimately delay any solutions while all parties get into a struggle with each other over which solutions is 'the best'. I dislike a one size will fits all mentality and I'm positive that each proposed solution has it's strong points and weak points and one solution might work well in one area and not so well in another.

This is the letter that City of Cape Town sent to the Department of Water rejected their assistance in building a desalination plant. @MmusiMaimane and @helenzille must stop lying. #DefeatDayZero #WaterCrisis pic.twitter.com/wloQUy0HAQ
— #SinuousLinesDesign (@Sentletse) January 28, 2018

Solutions

Although there are so many ways of solving this crisis here is a short list of 4 homegrown solutions that we can all support right now. Many of the solutions listed below are startups and innovators which have working solutions now and should be supported, although it would be preferential if some of the larger corporations and scientific research organisations apply their expertise to solving a most important issue of clean drinking water for all South Africans.

Bridgiot - A Dropula smart water meter enables users to track water consumption and can detect and notify users of leaks.
Greenchain Engineering - Our rainwater harvesting system, greywater system and a borehole filtration system have been very successful and uses clean techology ready for use in your home or office.
H20 Catchers - Grant Vanderwagen’s innovative solution is to turn fog into water through the H20 Catcher and is currently in talks setting up pilot project.
Airwater - Atmospheric Water Generators creating perfectly pure water from the air - you could be drinking 100% pure water and saving the water that you don’t use each and every day.

Conclusion

Lastly I would like to make a very important points about water:

About 71% of the Earth's surface is covered in water - the oceans hold about 96.5 percent of all Earth's water. Water exists in the air as water vapour, in rivers & dams and lakes, also in glaciers and icecaps and finally in the ground as soil moisture and in aquifers.

Did you know that the human body is averaging around 57-60% of water in adults and the percentage in infants is higher normally around 75-78% water but dropping to about 65% by one year of age.

Water is one of humanities most precious resources and please help raise awareness about how important clean water is.

#WaterCrisis info from City of Cape Town Water Saving Guide and Tips

Something that has puzzled me is the fact that Cape Town is surrounded by water - we have the Indian Ocean on the one side and the Atlantic ocean on the other - and also that we have a number of underground freshwater streams running into the sea. So honestly and realistically there is no 'shortage' but rather a crisis in awareness and management of our precious resources - this is the real issue in my opinion.

When we allow the patent system to dictate who is allowed to use our planets resources and effectively who will be able to afford to pay money to corporations to gain access to life giving water, then the real crisis is not lack of resources but rather an urgent overhaul of the patent system is needed to put humans before profit. Nobody is talking about it being okay to give certain corporations control over our life giving water to the detriment of billions of people - this is not okay.

If you'd like to see some of the players in controlling our water please take a look at these water patents I've collected and let us raise moral and ethical objections to allowing this to happen. I'm not going to name and shame all the players involved but lets just say many of these are part of the military industrial space complex and the others are what I consider evil monopolies who make money off of human suffering. I'm suggesting that we don't pay billions to these companies and organisations but rather just reverse engineer the technology and proceed to fix planet Earth with Open Source solutions for the human family.

Here is a list of some of the very important patents that have been granted regarding water - patents often create scarcity and put profit over people.

US8377297
US3342728
US5916441
US9517951