DAMS – Latest Levels: special report 9 June 2017
Special interim report on levels of the six Main Cape Dams.
Showing improved dam levels after the good rains of 6th- 8th June 2017.
Rainfall run-off has commenced. All the main rivers have commenced flowing again and the large dams are responding.
By Monday 5th June, just before the big storm, the total water stored had fallen to 170.2M.cuM (= 81.2M.cuM net accessible water after deduction of the usual 10% allowed for the inaccessible or difficult-to-extract last portion of the water).
As at yesterday 9th June, just 4 days later, combined water storage had risen to 179.1M.cuM. The difference is 8.9M.cuM or about 1.5 weeks supply of fresh water for SW Cape at current usage rates.
If one allows for the fact that about 3.5M.cuM would also have been drawn from the dams over those same 4 days, then gross water inflows to the dams must have been 12.4M.cuM in just 4 days.
It is time to be extremely relieved and grateful … but absolutely no time to relax savings efforts.
In context, we need 20 – 30 more storms of that size just to raise the dam’s combined levels to about 50-60% full. This is the minimum water level needed at the end of winter to see us safely through the following dry summer. It is statistically unlikely that we will receive that much rainfall in one winter, so we all need to keep saving as hard as we can to ensure that we are all water secure.
A shown on this Weather SA synoptic chart, two shallow cold fronts are approaching the Cape, so more rain is expected to fall in the dam catchment areas between today and Monday 12th June.
Read about D-I-Y roof run-off water capture and storage systems here.
Read the rationale for household level water harvesting systems here.
See a real example of water storage systems at work in a household.
To paraphrase Winston Churchill: this is ‘not the end (of the need to save water); this is not even the beginning of the end; but it is perhaps the end of the beginning‘.
Here is the reported standing of the six main dams as at Friday, 9th June, 2017.