Long-Term Planning During Emergency Response: A No Regrets Approach and Long-Term Vision for the Development of the Cape Flats Aquifer (Cape Town)

The Cape Flats Aquifer (CFA) is a primary coastal aquifer that underlies the City of Cape Town (South Africa), identified as a major source of water by hydrogeologists since the 1970s. Scientific specialists called for its protection so that it could be used for bulk water supply to the City. Unfortunately, the resource was largely ignored by the municipality, resulting in the degradation of the underlying aquifer over time to the point where groundwater from some portions is non-usable due to contamination. In 2015–2017, Cape Town experienced its worst drought since 1904, driving the municipality to look at alternative sources of water such as desalination, re-use of treated effluent and various groundwater schemes of which the CFA was one. Given the time-constraints of an emergency response project, long-term testing and study of the system to support design and implementation have been significantly reduced. A no regrets approach was therefore adopted by the team to reduce the chance of any negative impact such as saline intrusion, reduction in water levels that would negatively affect existing users that rely on groundwater for their livelihood and sensitive ecosystems. We aim to present the geoethical question of developing an emergency scheme with limited data on its sustainability and costing versus not developing it and risking a City of ~4 million people running out of water.