Make saving water part of your everyday life | Western Cape Government

Make saving water part of your everyday life

Water is one of our most important natural resources and vital for human needs, the environment, agriculture and economic industries.

World Water Day, is observed on 22 March every year. This year’s theme is "Nature for Water" – exploring nature-based solutions to the water challenges we face in the 21st century.

According to research done by the United Nations, approximately 2.1 billion people live without safe drinking water at home - affecting their health, education and livelihoods. woman carrying buckets of water

The Western Cape Province is currently experiencing one of our worse droughts in decades due to poor rainfall during our 2015, 2016 and 2017 winter seasons.

A national state of disaster has just been declared as a result of the devastating drought across many parts of the country.

In an effort to ease the pressure placed on our water supply, municipalities across the province will continue to implement level 1 to 6 water restrictions for the foreseeable future. These restrictions place higher tariffs on water consumption to encourage you to use only what you need.

Because agricultural usage was limited and Cape Town residents did well by sticking to the restrictions, #DayZero was fortunately averted. 

While we’ve made progress in our water-saving efforts, we’re still in danger of reaching #DayZero next year. According to the City of Cape Town, dam levels have dropped to 23.6% during the past week, and water usage has increased from 516 million litres per day to 534 million litres.

If we want to have water for longer, we need to get to 450 million litres per day in order to stretch our water supplies.

Many Capetonians have met the challenge by sticking to 50ℓ of water per day. Join all of our water savers who are still doing their best to help us reach our necessary target by exercising these water-saving tips and stick to your 50ℓ per day.

Stay on top of water storage levels in the Province with our dam location map.

Together we can beat this drought!


WATCH: Find out how the citizens of Cape Town is saving water.

The content on this page was last updated on 22 March 2018