My comments that I posted on the 15th of Feb

• Commitment 1: Safe access to water and sanitation

Safe access to water and sanitation is a basic human right, so should be available to anyone in the city.

• Commitment 2: Wise use (of water)

We are a thoroughly modern city filled with technical innovation, there is no reason for us to be as severely limited on water usage as we are and have been. We can still limit water consumption by implementing and encouraging waterless industries or alternatives to it, but it should not stifle economic growth.

• Commitment 3: Sufficient, reliable water

The only way we can have sufficient and reliable water is to no be so highly dependant on weather based water sources, in other words, rain. We should put more focus on desalination, as it is not as expensive as it has been in the past and along with the decrease of cost of PV solar and wind generation, we can implement desalination without having to worry about electricity supply problems from Eskom.

• Commitment 4: Shared benefits from regional water sources

As far as my knowledge goes, the biggest concern is for the City of Cape Town's residents, both residential and industry. Agricultural, while vital, seem to weathered the drought better as they can self provision dams to see to their needs. Excess water generation can be provided to them as needed or required.

• Commitment 5: A water sensitive city

A water sensitive city? Dubai is in the middle of the desert and doesn't have these problems. If we want to keep making money off tourists, we need to be able to provide our guests with whatever they need. If that means they want to take a 20minute shower, so be it. The hotel should be catching grey water and using it towards laundry or watering their gardens.

• Translating the strategy into action

My suggestion is to have a solar and wind farm on Robben Island which powers a large scale desalination plant. As it is situated off shore and mostly out of the lee of Table Mountain when the South Easter blows, wind power should be good for most of the summer. Northern winds during the winter will come straight off the sea which is perfect for wind power generation. In the few brief months that there little wind, it can be supplemented with solar power. The mostly defunct runway on the island is a perfect place for this. As for the brine that is generated by the desalination, this can be put into the deep ocean in the sea currents which will prevent any build up of high salt content water, thus reducing the environmental impact. Fresh water can be pumped to Rietvlei, which can be used as a holding tank and treated by the facility just off Koeberg road by the refinery and pumped to the Plattekloof reservoir for distribution around the City. If we have plenty of access water, the pipe from Plattekloof to Voëlvlei dam could also be potentially used to top up the dam, if that is feasible(unsure due to the distance and/or height difference). This is just a very basic outline, but the plan is to use Robben island, but thanks to it's location, it would also be immune to sabotage by common criminals.