There has been much debate over whether the City of Cape Town would consider using iceberg water as an additional source of water.
South African marine salvage expert Nick Sloane who made the proposal to the City and is in charge of the project, now has a $130 million investor.
The plan involves towing an iceberg from around 1 200 nautical miles away to Cape Town in order to offer the city some much needed relief from the water crisis. A saucer-like hollow will be excavated in the iceberg to collect melted water, which will then be pumped into tankers and discharged to a buoy mooring offshore. After that the water will be pumped into an undersea pipeline to be warmed and temporarily stored in a reservoir until it is pumped into reservoirs in Melkbos, and distributed from there.
The Southern Ice Team, headed by Sloane, estimates that a single iceberg would be able to supply around 55 million kilolitres of water a year which is more than 150 million litres a day.
Engineers and academics have been assessing the iceberg proposal and have found that it has sufficient technical feasibility and economic merit to be taken seriously.
Sloane has compared the cost of using iceberg water to water produced by desalination plants and has shown that iceberg water would be less expensive and more environmentally sound.
The City of Cape Town is currently looking at the various project components such as the final operating cost of the water. Sloane said that the project would need a signed agreement from the authorities by June 30.
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Cape Town's first desalination plant has come online in Strandfontein. The plant is currently pumping three million litres of desalinated sea water into the city's water supply and will eventually produce a whopping seven million litres on a daily basis.
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What you can do to save water.
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