From Cape Town to Santa Cruz: How people helped build water resilience

As cities move to secure their water supplies in the backdrop of extreme droughts, two cities in two continents provide blueprints for solutions.

Droughts are becoming an ever-growing stress to cities, growing in intensity and frequency. Although dams and reservoirs are critical to ensure water supply to cities as rainfall becomes more erratic, soft infrastructure is just as important. Cape Town in South Africa and Santa Cruz in the USA are examples of cities which stared drought in the face and turned to external help to solve their problems.

Cape Town improves drought governance through improved expertise and transparency

In 2018, Cape Town was gripped with fear of ‘Day Zero’ — the day on which taps were potentially going to be turned off, following three years of deficient rainfall. At the peak of Day Zero restrictions, residents were limited to 50 litres of water use per day — the equivalent of a five-minute shower.

In a bid to avert a water disaster, the City of Cape Town convened the Water Resilience Advisory Committee (WRAC) in 2017, bringing in external experts to help address the crisis. The committee members were water experts and major stakeholders. They showed “genuine generosity of spirit,” in providing expertise and perspective, according to an official of the Department of Water and Sanitation.

The WRAC pressured officials to be more transparent with the public on the situation. City officials created a dashboard that shared updates on dam levels and mapped areas of high-water use.

A clear long-term benefit emerging from the WRAC’s involvement was improved lines of communication between officials and external stakeholders. Though their involvement did not achieve collaborative governance, they brought in more expertise to drought management and adaptation. Drought management improved, both during the crisis and after, helping Cape Town develop a more resilient urban water system.

Cape Town’s WRAC offers a blueprint for cities looking to open water governance to the wider community of stakeholders. And they are not the only city pursuing this model. 

Santa Cruz adopts collaborative water governance to address droughts

With similar climatic conditions, Santa Cruz, a city to the south of San Francisco, understands Cape Town’s water struggles. Its water supply, sourced from reservoirs, has also been under extreme threat due to droughts.

The Santa Cruz Water Supply Advisory Committee (WSAC) was convened by the City of Santa Cruz in 2014. The WSAC goes further than Cape Town’s WRAC by handing over planning for the city’s water supply to a group of citizens.

The city nominated 14 people, largely from outside government. The nominees were concerned citizens and representatives from organisations with environmental and business stakes. The WSAC was supported by the Santa Cruz Water Department. The head of the Water Department, Rosemary Menard, was an ex-officio non-voting member. At the end of their 18-month tenure, WSAC’s recommendations were accepted by the City of Santa Cruz.

Essentially, the WSAC prioritises using ‘excess’ water from north coast streams and the San Lorenzo river to recharge groundwater reserves or send it across to adjacent water districts who either use it in lieu of their bore water or store it in their reserves (‘water transfers’). 

If surface water can top up underground reserves – aquifers – then in drought years, there is more water available. Adjacent districts with full aquifers could then send water back to Santa Cruz when needed (‘water exchanges’). 

This approach means that water is not running out to sea, but rather being used instead of draining precious aquifer supplies. This is expected to prevent sea water seeping into depleted aquifers, which is a growing concern. And because the water is stored underground, there are less evaporation losses. As groundwater levels are restored, stream flows are likely to improve and contribute to a healthier riverine ecosystem.

In establishing their committee, the City of Santa Cruz took two extraordinary steps.1) Not only did the council hand over water planning to people outside of the city government, but it did so to people who were not necessarily experts on the subject matter. 2) The committee was supported by a panel of four experts, as well as a technical team with expertise in geology, water modelling, law and econometrics. But the decisions on final recommendations lay with the committee.

According to some committee members, the expert facilitation of the process was key to its success. Professional facilitators spent a lot of time developing a shared vocabulary and helping the group listen to one another. A lot of input was also provided by a ‘convention’ that solicited over 50 community-generated ideas for addressing water supply. 

The committee met once a month in the evenings over food, which was important in building a sense of community. The meetings were open to the public, who were encouraged to present ideas on water supply.

Historically, governments have borne the responsibility for drought management. However, as the scale of the challenge increases, collaborative governance is important in managing natural resources.

As more cities are water stressed, the approaches of Cape Town and Santa Cruz demonstrate the value in engaging citizens and diverse stakeholders in water governance. Soliciting the viewpoints of technical experts and of people who live and invest in the community has the potential to improve the robustness of water planning. It builds trust between citizens and local governments and enables the co-development of resilient responses.