With Level 5 water restrictions announced by Cape Town mayor Patricia De Lille on Sunday, the new restrictions will hit the commercial property sector particularly hard.
Owners of buildings in the commercial property sector are required to lower their water consumption by 20% compared to last year. The City of Cape Town and Cape Town and Western Cape Tourism, Trade and Investment (Wesgro), have been working hard with the tourism industry to reduce water usage at hotels ahead of the tourist season which begins in October.
Wesgro spokesperson Colin Wardle said they were also encouraging tourists who arrive in Cape Town to see the rest of the Western Cape to ease pressure on the city.
“At the moment the restrictions are localised to the City of Cape Town with the other five regions within the province coping much better with the current climate change issue.”
De Lille’s spokeswoman, Zara Nicholson, said that hotels have already started lowering water consumption by reducing their laundry washing frequency, removing bath plugs as well as installing water efficient plumbing settings.
She said that from yesterday, households using more than 20 000 litres of water a month, faced a “very high fine which is yet to be determined”.
Photography SA Venues