A Cape Town lesson for Chennai and other Indian cities facing ‘Day Zero’

Recently, southern India, especially Chennai witnessed one of its severest water crises in history. But, shockingly no advertisements, hoardings, announcements on saving water can be observed in the city. It seems as if the panic that grips our cities during summer evaporates from people’s minds as soon as monsoon arrives. Such an approach can lead to a ‘Day Zero’ if stricter steps are not taken to make people water wise

On August 1, as I landed at Chennai airport, I was expecting some big billboards and multimedia messages running across the airport asking people to use water judiciously. Even though the city had just survived one of its severest water crisis seasons in its recorded history, there was no visible effort to raise ample awareness. Monsoon had arrived but the city was still facing water crisis. Only small stickers near water taps, asking you to ‘save water’, were to be seen. That’s certainly welcome but not enough. I was there to speak on the current water crisis our country faces and how climate change is going to aggravate the situation. It was just natural for me to expect at least a message like “Don’t use shower, Chennai is nearing a Day Zero situation” in the bathroom of the accommodation I was provided. Hopefully, I find that next time I visit the facility. I was not aware of the current water supply situation in the city, nor had any idea of the health and current status of the source this facility uses. But the way Chennai people had struggled for water just a few days back, as I saw on television channels, had sent chills down my spine. So, I decided to go for a voluntary cut in my water use when I was in this city. I went for a half-bucket bath, tried not to use the flush but throw a few mugs of water into the pan to clean the faeces up. The Day Zero in Cape Town was haunting my mind, as was the prediction of several reports in India that point to a Day Zero like situation in several cities including Chennai. And I was still wondering, why the Cape Town experience of shifting the Day Zero was yet to come to our city managers? Why a visitor arriving at Chennai or Bengaluru or any other city is still not greeted with loud and clear messages on the water crisis facing the city? Do we expect our people to behave water wise on their own? If that was the case, the governments would not be spending thousands of crores in creating awareness on ‘Swachh Bharat Mission’. While it is important to prepare strategic documents and plans to fight water crisis, it is more important to keep constantly communicating with the people. The Cape Town lesson comes handy here, and our cities must learn.

Climate change induced drought can jeopardise city water systems
In this column in February 2018, I had written how the Day Zero was approaching and had already put the city planners and dwellers on their toes. In fact, the city of 4 million people, which is completely dependent for its water on the Theewaterskloof Dam and its five sister reservoirs, kept planning to meet a Day Zero like situation for more than a decade. The city had been enforcing restrictions in water use since 2000 when people were asked to use less water owing to below average rainfall. Water restrictions were again enforced towards the end of 2004 following a severe drought in the winters of 2003 and 2004. These episodes, and the increasing immigration of people into the city, called for a fresh analysis of future water demand and supply scenarios. A Reconciliation Strategy Study published in 2007 did this job to project the supply and demand scenario from the water supply system through 2030. This study, besides recommending induction of more water into the system, acknowledged the fundamental risk of depending on reservoirs that makes it more vulnerable to climate change induced long droughts and reduction in rainfall.
The city authorities decided to reduce water demand through several measures. Some of the measures really helped and then rainfall also came to the rescue. However, things worsened. The consecutive drought of three years, considered to be a 300-year climate phenomenon, dried up the reservoirs to a scary level in late 2017. From being full in 2014, the city dams’ water levels were down to 71 percent in November 2015, which then further reduced to 60 percent, and then to just 38 percent at the time of beginning of summer of 2017. By January 2018, it was found that the reservoirs had only three months’ water supply left. This gave rise to the concept of Day Zero.

Day Zero: A perfect messaging effort
In fact, the term ‘Day Zero’ was coined by the city managers to communicate with the people the gravity of the situation and to prepare them for the drastic measures that were needed to be taken. Now the city authorities were desperately asking people to reduce their water consumption to below 50 litres per person per day. ‘Day Zero’ would have taken effect when dam levels reached 13.5 per cent. That would have meant the municipality would have taken control of municipal water supply in a phased approach in order to stretch this supply, until the dams were at a sufficient level to allow water to be distributed via the reticulation system once again. Utility managers would have shut off water to homes in the suburbs and to businesses outside of the priority city centre area, families would have had to collect rationed quantity 25 litres of water per person per day from 200 collection points around the city. Household taps would have completely run dry, public taps would have been opened with heavy police & military protection; and, water would have gone costlier.
The city applied a lot of methods such as slowing down the pressure of water pipes, introducing water meters that would cut the supply after the allocated amount was discharged to a household, banning use of water for car wash and spraying in lawns, and so on and so forth. People largely cooperated and the ‘Day Zero’ was shifted from mid-April to mid-May, and finally it did not come. The arrival of winter rainfall in 2018, the help by nearby farmer associations to give away their share of water to the city, and a constant effort by all the stakeholders together helped Cape Town to avoid ‘Day Zero’. But the danger looms large, as climate change is going to induce more such droughts. The city is now mulling several medium term and long term measures to fight future uncertainties. Communication played a major role in all these efforts. The city managers invested a lot in both coining the appropriate communication messages and also getting them spread to the entire population. The panic that was created also affected the rich and water insensitive citizens who feared standing in long queues for a few litres of water. The people were updated on the situation of water use and scarcity on a day-to-day basis so that everybody was aware where they are heading to and how important it was to use less water. Electronic bill boards across the city were regularly displaying the situation and people were being repeatedly reminded of the situation, rules and measures being taken. The city adhered to an ‘adaptive water management’ practice where in the supply was regulated each day based on the availability of water that was being monitored with technological interventions and the information dissemination on the situation was transparently done to the city population.
I did not find any such emergency in Chennai. This city, as well as all our other cities, need to get the message right. ‘Day Zero’ is not necessarily the day when water availability will be zero. In reality, the kind of water crisis our cities are already in, the Cape Town kind of measures need to be adopted with immediate effect. We need to communicate with people and work with them for better water management. We also need to work towards water conservation through source augmentation, recharge and rejuvenation.