Mayor Patricia de Lille noted that, overall,  the water level at six of the city’s water-supply dams have reached 28.1% and could hit 13.5% by April 21, dubbed Day Zero, when water taps are expected to shut. Residents will be rationed to 25 liters of water a day per person. Cape Town’s total daily water usage now is capped at 450 million liters.

Focus has shifted to advanced water-pressure management, more water-management devices at high-consumption properties, leak detection and treated effluent systems, offsetting the use of drinking water for non-potable purposes, the mayor said.

An estimated 63% of water supplied to Cape Town is used for domestic and industrial purposes, while 32% is taken up by irrigation; another 5% is directed to the towns of Stellenbosch, Paarl and Wellington and others in the West Coast and Swartland regions.

Cape Town’s Western Cape Water Supply System comprises a series of water pipelines, turbines and water-distribution networks combined with six dams. On the Sonderend River, the Theewaterskloof Dam is the largest dam, with a capacity of 480 million cu meters.

South Africa’s Dept. of Water Affairs noted that, at the end of 2017, the dam’s water level had reached 12.9%, with 10% of it unreachable.

The city is implementing different components of a $62.2-million water conservation-and-demand management strategy, launched in 2008. At least seven water-supply projects—four desalination plants, two groundwater-abstraction initiatives and one water-recycling project—are in the pipeline to add 200 million liters per day to the existing water-supply capacity.