The City of Cape Town recently embarked on an initiative to refurbish boreholes around the West Coast in an effort to increase the volume of the Atlantis Aquifer.

The project forms part of the Municipality’s Water Resilience Plan which aims to invest in alternative water sources to ensure additional supply for the city, which is currently in an unprecedented drought crisis.

During a visit to the Aquifer City of Cape Town Executive Mayor, Patricia de Lille, said a lot of ork had gone into ensuring an increase in the volume of water from the aquifer system.

“Prior to this work, this system was producing around four million litres of water per day. We have now increased the yield from this aquifer by an additional five million litres per day,” she explained.

Working to increase future yields

The Mayor said the output from the borehole system at Witzands and the one in Silwerstroom where refurbishment work has also been done – is now feeding nine million litres per day into the Atlantis supply system.

“While this increase in yield has helped a great deal, we are working hard to further increase the supply from this aquifer system over the next few months. This will allow Atlantis to become self-sufficient and not need the augmentation from the Voëlvlei pipeline, as has been the case for some years now,” she added.

The water is serving homes and industrial businesses in Atlantis, Mamre and Pella on the outskirts of the West Coast, which is quite a vast area and so the additional capacity will be welcomed.

“This work demonstrates our commitment to addressing this current drought crisis. I made it clear over the weekend when we announced the site of a new desalination plant with the V&A Waterfront: we have a plan and we will supply water, but we need Team Cape Town to assist us. If we all do our best – as partners – we will not run out of water,” the mayor concluded.