Cape Town is currently in the grips of the area ’s bad water shortage in living remembering , with each day steady dripping towards “ Day Zero ” , the fear appointment Cape Town could become the first major city in the world to run out of water system .
Not all promise is lost , however . Nick Sloane , a Cape Town local , has proposed a bluff program to cart drifting icebergs to the South African sea-coast in the hope of replenish the city ’s parch man-made lake .
Sloane ’s secret plan planinvolves catching berg that have stray across the South Atlantic Ocean towards South Africa . The team could then twine pass iceberg in a “ geo - textile material skirt ” and tow them towards the city using large tank ship ships via the Benguela Current . Once it ’s arrived in the port metropolis , the iceberg would be chopped up into a slurry and melted into millions of l of drinking piddle .
“ We want to show that if there is no other source to lick the urine crisis , we have another idea no one else has consider of yet , ” Sloane , the CEO of a US maritime salvage firm , toldReuters .
It sound pretty challenging , but if there ’s one guy for the job , it ’s Sloane and his company . He was one of the main marine salvage expertstasked with recoveringthe turn turtle Italian passenger liner Costa Concordia back in 2012 to 2014 .
" We spoke to local government tardily last year ; they thought it was a crazy idea , " Sloane said , speaking toCNN . However , he added that it ’s well more credible than other marriage offer , such as bringing water down from the heavily polluted Congo River in Central Africa .
Cape Town ’s water crisishas been lallygag for a number of eld , with 2015 to 2017 providing some of the driest years on track record . antecedently , the city thought they would run out of water system as early as April 2018 . That day has fortunately been press back to an unspecified escort in 2019 . When that day comes , the self-assurance will be coerce to change by reversal off all water taps .
Still , it stay on a burn problem , with few viable solutions in sight . The current communications protocol is for citizens tocut down on water consumptionto less than 50 liters ( 13 gallons ) a Clarence Shepard Day Jr. by not flushing toilets as often and reusing water whenever potential . As for a farsighted - term solution , there’splenty of proposals , but not much in the way of natural action .
Meanwhile , the city ’s reservoir eagerly wait for rainwater .
