Running Dry

Cape Town, South Africa, is dangerously close to running out of water. The metropolitan area, which is about the size of Los Angeles, California, has been experiencing a severe drought for the past three years. As a result, the area hasn’t received enough rain to replenish the reservoirs—large reserves of fresh water—that serve its nearly 4 million residents. Despite recent restrictions on water usage, the reservoirs’ levels continue to fall.

Experts believe that droughts like the one in South Africa are becoming more and more common because of climate change. “Climate change makes weather unpredictable and more extreme,” says David Olivier, a water management researcher at the Global Change Institute in Cape Town.

If Cape Town runs out of water before its winter rainy season, officials will have to turn off the taps. Then people must line up at one of 200 collection points for containers of water. Each person will be limited to 25 liters (6.6 gallons) per day. That’s about 7 percent of what the average American uses.