by Bob Walsh
Cape Town, South Africa, is the tenth largest city in Africa, the second largest in South Africa and the legislative seat of the country. They are also about to run out of water. They have maybe 90 days of water left after a years-long drought.
Once the reservoirs get down to about 13.5%, now anticipated to happen around April 22, the water will be turned off except for critical public infrastructure, like hospitals. There will then be public water stations around the city, under armed guard, where you can show up and get 6.6 gallon of water per person per day.
Cape Town has about 3.7 million people. It will be the first major city in the world to run out of water. Barring some miracle (remember it is the dry season in the southern hemisphere) things are about to get real interesting down there.
I admit that somehow I can't quite see the wife of members of their parliament driving down to one of 200 public water stations to draw their 6.6 gallons every day, presumably with some sort of ration book. I wonder how long it will take for bootleg water suppliers to set up business? I also expect that rental chemical toilets will become very popular very soon. Or it might just become like San Francisco where people just shit in the street and let somebody else worry about cleaning it up.
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