The day is observed annually on 22 March. This year’s theme is “Wastewater”.
This comes as the City of Cape Town this week announced that there is only 18.6% of potable water left in its dams.
The city's Xanthea Limberg says this equates to about 103 days that will take users into winter.
“Even if we experience rainfall, particularly in winter, we will still be maintaining water restrictions throughout to ensure we minimise the impact come next summer.”
The city says it’s not ruling out even more stringent water restrictions as part of contingency measures to conserve limited resources.
It will be spending more than R210 million in the new financial year to get emergency schemes off the ground, which includes extracting water from the city's aquifers and desalination.
The city says at current levels, there are just over 100 days of usable water left in its six dams.
The municipality will need around R315 million over the next three years to fund emergency water schemes.
Should the city experience another winter of below-average rainfall, it will need to ramp up water extraction from the Table Mountain aquifer from two to 10 million litres a day, as well as five million litres a day from the Cape Flats aquifer.
A small scale re-use plant for drinking water with a yield of 10 million litres a day is also on the cards.
/Eyewitness news/
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