National government has committed a further R553 million to water projects in the City of Cape Town.

According to Cape Town Mayor, Patricia De Lille the funds will be used for the Cape Flats, Atlantis, and Table Mountain Group Aquifer recharge projects.

“Following the gazetting of the grant in October, the funds will be reflected on the City’s Informal Settlements, Waste and Water Services department’s budget to be spent in terms of the project delivery plan,” De Lille explained.

The funding was received from the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, including the National Disaster Management Centre, in conjunction with National Treasury.

De Lille said the funds would strengthen the Municipality’s efforts to ensure water security and build a water-resilient City.

“I would like to thank these departments as well as the Western Cape Provincial Government for the role they played in facilitating access to this funding support.”

Rising dam levels, lower restrictions

Meanwhile the City lowered water restrictions from Level 6b and Level 6 respectively to Level 5 from, 1 October 2018, citing “the encouraging dam recovery and conservation efforts by Capetonians” as the reason.

Dam levels showed an improvement of 1.9% over the last week to 75.9% of storage capacity.  Commenting on the relaxed restrictions the City noted that government was due to make its determination on the water situation going forward in December.

“The City, however, believes that it is unfair to wait until December to make an announcement about water restrictions as this will lead to our customers having to pay the highest tariff for an unnecessarily long period of time,” it highlighted.