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Cape Town to become 1st major city to run out of water

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Small Town Guy, Jan 21, 2018.

  1. Small Town Guy

    Small Town Guy Well-Known Member

    This is a story of intense personal interest as we spend 6 weeks in Cape Town every year with my wife's family and we're headed there in early February but it's also a major story on a global level. Because of the worst drought in 100 years and government bungling, Cape Town is headed to Day Zero, when taps will run dry in the city and it'll become the first city to run out of water.

    It's obviously a story about climate change, but there's also a political angle. The Western Cape and Cape Town are under the control of the DA, the opposition party in a country dominated by the ANC (Mandela's party). Both parties have screwed up and both are blaming the other for part of the problem.

    In Cape Town, 'Day Zero' is coming very soon — the day the water runs out

    But when the water does run out, there will be 200 water stations set up in the city where people will line up to fill up their buckets. Cape Town is an amazing city and I still can't wait to go in a few weeks. But this is...this is not good.
     
  2. Vombatus

    Vombatus Well-Known Member

    Will be a case study in what might happen to the Southwest US.
     
  3. doctorquant

    doctorquant Well-Known Member

    The Southwest U.S. population is expected to double between now and 2037? Because Cape Town's population has doubled since 1999.
     
  4. Vombatus

    Vombatus Well-Known Member

    Well, I was thinking along the lines of running out of water and not so much population. But, you know, maybe immigration?
     
  5. doctorquant

    doctorquant Well-Known Member

    You read through that and it's easy to think, "Climate change!", but, shit ... Cape Town's population has doubled in 18-odd years. Doubled. It doesn't take much of a drought to run into some water troubles if your population is doubling that fast.
     
  6. Vombatus

    Vombatus Well-Known Member

    No, I read drought. Severe drought. I didn't read climate change.

    Doubling? I've always heard population growth is on an exponential curve, and I have no idea where on that curve Cape Town was in 1999. Maybe doubling was about right. Fuck if I know, but that's a big part of the problem: fucking.
     
  7. TheSportsPredictor

    TheSportsPredictor Well-Known Member

    What a shithole.
     
    Slacker likes this.
  8. Small Town Guy

    Small Town Guy Well-Known Member

    And coupled (or thirded?) with the government in-fighting/incompetence, that is a recipe for disaster.
     
  9. Neutral Corner

    Neutral Corner Well-Known Member

    Wait till the aquifers feeding the city of L.A. and agriculture in the valley start to peter out. If changing weather patterns lead to less snowpack things could go bad in a hurry.
     
  10. typefitter

    typefitter Well-Known Member

    One of the few lessons I've retained from my mostly useless graduate education in urban planning: Rapid growth in an existing urban center is very difficult to manage. It's especially hard to build new infrastructure in old cities. I imagine there are parallels, for example, between New York City's subway crisis and Cape Town's water crisis.
     
    britwrit likes this.
  11. LanceyHoward

    LanceyHoward Well-Known Member

    Water shortages in California will be a result of the lack of free markets. Water for agriculture is sold well below market rates. Which means farmers in California can economically grow cotton. At some point hat will change and cotton production will move back to the southeast.
     
  12. Azrael

    Azrael Well-Known Member

    The population of Las Vegas has doubled in under ten years several times in the last century.

    Las Vegas City Limits: A Boom Town’s Growing Water Woes

    Las Vegas | History, Layout, Economy, & Facts - History

    How Las Vegas Gambled on the Housing Boom—and Lost

    Vegas. Phoenix. Tuscon. Albuquerque. The fastest growing cities in the country hang by a very slender thread - the Colorado river.

    www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2016/01/08/americans-are-moving-south-west-again

    The unprecedented water crisis of the American Southwest

    A Mega-Drought Is Coming to America’s Southwest

    And midwesterners should ask their local farmer how things are going with the Oglala Aquifer.

    The best book on water misallocation in the American West is still 'Cadillac Desert' by Marc Reisner.
     
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