Cape Town narrowly avoided “Day Zero,” but that doesn’t mean the city is resilient to future water shortages.
Cape Town residents queue to fill containers from a spring water source on Feb. 2, 2018.
For more than a decade, Cape Town has leveled demand, reduced leaks and implemented pressure management and water restrictions. This made Cape Town’s water system highly efficient and therefore less resilient because there were fewer reserves to draw from in times of unusual scarcity.