Strategic Thinking: "Typhoid Fever outbreak in Western Cape"
Summary and Main Point: We live with a water borne sewerage system.
"Typhoid Fever outbreak in Western Cape" hits Cape Town and World Headlines. A friend from Austria asked me about it, so as it's international news, I thought I should write about it. Something else, for context, is that at the moment in Cape Town, there is a severe shortage of rental cars, so it seems like everyone is here, and we want everyone to feel safe. So let's not be touchy and myopic and let's see what's going on and what we need to do.
This kind of headline is like "Russia invades Ukraine" or "The USA and Great Britain attack France" (in 1944) without considering context. Why did this happen?
Why is there Typhoid Fever and Cholera in the Western Cape? Was the 2018 water shortage a drought or was it a Water Management Crisis? When was the first Water Management Crisis in the Western Cape? 1800! What caused it? Population explosion in a water scarce area. So the "authorities" (and one wonders if they are authorities at the moment) have known about Water Management Crises in the Western Cape since at least 1800, and the local indigineous peoples have known about it for thousands of years. So what is the definition of a drought in the Western Cape and what were the big dams designed to do? We need 5 years of lower than expected rainfall for the situation to be a drought. If we have water shortages within 1 to 3 years, then it cannot be considered to be a drought, and it is a Water Management Crisis, and if it was a Water Management Crisis, then it could have been avoided!
One should note that Cape Town is still in a Water Management Crisis, and our authorities and ministers pray for rain. In fact our previous Minister of Water, Nomvula Mokonyane's, name "Nomvula" means "Bringer of Rain".
The Western Cape authorities have started on desalination projects a number of times over the past 30 years, but each time it rains, the projects are shelved. But Cape Town is still short of 600 million litres of water a day even with the dams being full and the only way to supplement this is with desalination, which depends on sea water (we are at the sea), and electricity (we have electricity rationing in South Africa, and even without load shedding, South Africa has about 1/5th of the electricity it needs), and human ingenuity and most important of all, long term thinking, which is the opposite of the biggest plague on our planet at the moment, myopic thinking.
It never fails to amaze me when experts comment on things as if they have only just cropped up, with comments like "urbanisation or global warming" contribute to Typhoid fever! Yes, it is true that urbanisation and global warming are contributors, but these leave out a step. And these phrases are paltering, saying a fact, whilst hiding a bigger truth. What is that step? It is that urbanisation covers aquifer inlet points and many other areas in concrete and tar. This leads to water run off to outside the urban area, so that there is limited water in the urban area. Global warming, which should be called Global weirding (a term invented by Thomas Friedman in his book "Hot, Flat and Crowded") means that there is surplus water in some places and less water in other places, or because the atmosphere is heating up, there is more humidity and therefore the air can hold more water until it rains so it tends to rain episodically (irregularly) rather than regularly. If all the rain falls in one month then the dams won't be able to hold the water requirements for a year (and there will be flooding - anyone noticed this recently?).
In the 1970's and 1980's, the Western Cape's biggest dam was built and huge tunnels were built through the Western Cape mountains to bring water to the metropolis, urban area. But since the 1980's, the population of the Cape Town urban area has doubled, but the dam capacity has increased by only about 10%.
The Western Cape Dam Capacity is 1870.4 million cubic meters ( https://www.westerncape.gov.za/general-publication/latest-western-cape-dam-levels#:~:text=What's%20the%20state%20of%20Western,21%20February%202022%20is%2068.2%25. ) and the Berg River Dam 130,000 megalitres is the biggest dam added since 1994. That's 130 million cubic meters, which is 7% of the total Western Cape Supply.
I understand that Typhoid and Cholera are "normal" in South Africa, with cases every year, but what about looking at a bigger picture? And why does disease need to be "normal"? Note that the article points out that there are at least 150 cases a year of Typhoid in South Africa, whereas in the "current Western Cape outbreak" (time undefined), there are 64 cases. One would also have thought that with the incredible statistical gathering systems added during The Covid Era that everything would be tracked, not just Covid, where lots of symptoms of many diseases are similar, at least at first. Why aren't we getting cases, hospitalisations and deaths in daily headlines for Typhoid and Cholera (and every other disease) considering we have been so good at it for Covid, with so much learning (and reporting) happening?
Anyway back to the long term. A well run city uses 400 litres of water per person per day. South Africans have always had restrictions, enforced using a stepped tariff system. Before the 2018 "drought" (Water Management Crisis), Capetonians were allowed to use 160 litres of water per person per day, and as can be seen from the photo with this article, by January 2018, it was 45% less at 87 litres of water day, and at a much higher price.
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So even pre-drought, Capetonians had rationing, being allowed about half of the well-run-city quantity. So Cape Town needs desalination. At least 600 million litres per day. Now.
says that a flush is 6 to 10 litres per day. How many flushes are there? What about other waste that goes to Sewerage as opposed to going to Storm Water Systems?
We live in a water borne sewerage system. A water borne system needs about 85 litres of water per person per day to flush the sewerage out of the system into where it needs to go.
So if the City tells you that you can use 87 litres of water per person per day, you are already in a problem, because if that water is being used for drinking and cleaning and showering and toilets, then what is going to happen? And remember, nature works slowly, forgiving humans for small errors, but nature catches up with catastrophic cataclysms when humans don't mend their ways.
See https://mypowerstation-sa.blogspot.com/search?q=cholera for articles I wrote in 2017 and 2019. Search for "cholera" and "typhoid" in the articles if you don't want to read them in full.
Here are some quotes from my articles:
"Stagnant decaying sewerage is a recipe for Cholera and Typhoid."
"We cannot look at one variable in isolation. We need to consider the big picture. Just like we cannot look at water income and say it is falling and we need a levy. We need to look at the big picture. And if we tell people to use 25 litres of water a day and we have cholera, then what is the point? We have looked at a single variable and we have said 'everything is like that.'"
"If I only have 25 litres per day, I will die. Why? Because I live in a big city. And I need the safety and security of safe drinking, washing and cooking water and I need to know that my sewers and stormwater systems are working properly so that I don't get cholera, dysentery and other lack-of-water-based-diseases."
So what is the real headline? Why does the Western Cape and South Africa have cholera and typhoid cases every year? If we have 150 cases per year in South Africa, how many do we have in the Western Cape per year? Is 64 a lot or a litte? What is the time period of the 64 cases? How can we permanently solve these problems? If we solve these problems will we still be dependent on expensive imports and local problems?
Database Engineer
3 年I’ve read the South African energy policies and the transport policies including White Papers, etc, and they are brilliant. But not implemented. South Africa has the DPME, the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation. I’ve even worked in part of it, the Western Cape Government’s APP (Annual Performance Plan). IMHO, DPME should be the DPIME. Implementation is missing in South Africa. How do we get from great Strategy (Policy) to great Implementation?