By John — Desalination News
Cape Town’s plan to build a desalination plant at Paarden Eiland — approved by the city council less than a year ago — has been shelved after state freight and port operator Transnet moved to expand port operations on the same site, pushing the project back by roughly five years.
Presenting the City’s latest Water Outlook report to council on 21 August, mayco member for water and sanitation Zahid Badroodien said officials are now searching for an alternative location for the plant. The environmental impact assessment already completed for the Paarden Eiland site will effectively need to restart elsewhere, adding both time and cost to a project that had already cleared its scoping phase.
The 70-million-litre-a-day plant was meant to be the centrepiece of the City’s New Water Programme, a plan to add 300 million litres of water a day on top of Cape Town’s six supply dams through a mix of desalination, groundwater abstraction, wastewater reuse and a transfer scheme moving water from the Berg River into Voëlvlei Dam. That programme is now only expected to be fully operational by 2036, and progress on its other components has been mixed: groundwater work in the Atlantis aquifer has been set back by cable theft, and the Berg River–Voëlvlei scheme, originally due in 2023, has slipped again to 2030.
The delay lands as demand pressure builds. City dam levels stood at 77% in late August, which officials classify as an “early drought caution” stage for the time of year, and Cape Town’s average water usage has risen roughly 50% over the past nine years — outpacing population growth and exceeding the City’s own planning assumptions. Officials estimate the City’s allocation from Western Cape dams, which are shared with agriculture and other towns, will be exhausted within two years on current trends. Winter rainfall this year was well below normal across much of the catchment area, and provincial officials have pointed to a strengthening South Atlantic high-pressure system as a climate-change-linked factor pushing rain-bearing weather fronts further south, away from the region’s dams.
The setback is a reversal for a project that, as recently as last December’s council approval, had been positioned to begin procurement in 2026 under a public-private partnership model. Officials say there is no immediate risk to supply, but have cautioned that water restrictions are likely in the coming months regardless.
(Source: GroundUp)