- Knysna has about 10 days of water supply left.
- Experts say climate change is worsening drought risk, and governance-related challenges are contributing to the crisis.
- Diversifying water sources, fixing ageing infrastructure, and strengthening demand management are essential to prevent future crises.
- For more climate change news and analysis, visit News24 Climate Future.
With Knysna’s main dam at critically low levels, authorities are scrambling to avert a full-blown water crisis, and residents have been warned that water rationing may soon be unavoidable.
The municipality said on 7 January that the Akkerkloof Dam, the town’s primary water source, had dropped to just 20%, leaving roughly 13 days of water supply at current consumption levels. It said it had already initiated emergency measures.
On Tuesday, local government MEC Anton Bredell said that he intended to ask Cabinet to declare both the ongoing fires and the water-supply crunch in the Western Cape a provincial state of disaster.
“The core problem is that more water is being drawn from Akkerkloof than is flowing into it. That is the crisis we face. This is why we are urging the people of Knysna to conserve water. To get through this crisis, behaviour must change,” Bredell said.
Less than a decade after Cape Town narrowly avoided becoming the world’s first major city to run out of water, and with Knysna just days away from the taps running dry, News24 sought to understand the reasons behind the Western Cape’s often fraught and recurring water-supply issues.
Ayesha Laher, an environmental scientist and the director of AHL Water, told News24 in an interview that Knysna had achieved “quite a good score of 77%”, rated as average, in its most recent No Drop audit. This is an assessment of water availability and non-revenue water status of a municipality.
“It’s important to understand that the No Drop scorecard does not tell you how much water there is; [it is] about the ability of a municipality to use water efficiently, and it measures certain criteria,” she said.
According to the scorecard, the municipality has an “adequate” water conservation management strategy in place, scoring 65%.
However, “they seem to be doing poorly with regards to asset management – that’s meter replacements, etc. Their technical skills score is also quite low,” Laher said.
Rainfall changes
Water resource management researcher Professor Anja du Plessis told News24 that the region was facing several climate-related changes, including shifts in rainfall patterns, which are becoming increasingly unpredictable. This is complicating surface water capture and storage.
“Longer and more frequent dry spells ... reduce baseflows in rivers and limit recharge of groundwater systems,” she said.
The “growing tendency towards more intense rainfall events” increases the risk of flooding and erosion, but does little to improve long-term water availability because the rapid runoff limits infiltration and storage.
“Collectively, these climate signals can heighten uncertainty in water supply reliability and place increasing pressure on both surface and groundwater-dependent systems in the Garden Route,” she said.
Du Plessis said that the combination of human-driven climate change and governance failure had led to Knysna’s current state.
“Water stress is the result of both climate pressures and governance challenges and failures, but their impacts are not equal... Long-standing governance challenges, including poor maintenance, high non-revenue water, weak demand management, and not diversifying its ‘water mix’, have significantly amplified the crisis,” she told News24.
Limited storage options
The Garden Route’s natural landscape also affects water security, particularly during drought.
“The steep topography and fragmented catchments can result in rapid runoff during rainfall events, limiting natural storage and reducing opportunities for groundwater recharge. As a result, water yields can decline at a quicker rate during dry periods,” said Du Plessis.
Coastal conditions, with their high humidity and strong winds, result in increased water loss through evaporation.
The region’s high ecological sensitivity – such as estuaries, wetlands, and protected ecosystems – also restricts how much surface water can be used without causing environmental damage, she said.
“Together, these factors limit storage options, reduce drought buffering capacity, and make the region’s water systems particularly vulnerable to scenarios such as below-average rainfall and prolonged dry spells.”
So what is to be done? Du Plessis responded:
Over the next five years, national and provincial governments should prioritise a combination of structural and governance interventions to reduce climate-driven water risks in vulnerable municipalities.
She proposed the following measures to help solve the crisis:
- Expand and diversify water supply sources, including desalination, groundwater development, stormwater capture, and water reuse, to reduce reliance on variable rainfall. She said there are already plans in place.
- Urgent investment to rehabilitate ageing infrastructure, reduce non-revenue water, and strengthen maintenance programmes.
- Implementation of robust demand management measures, including metering, water-loss reduction, and public awareness campaigns.
- Enable proactive, adaptive decision-making by improving capacity for integrated water resource planning and climate risk assessment.
- Preserve long-term water yields by safeguarding ecologically sensitive catchments and natural storage systems.
“By combining these interventions, we can improve resilience in a collaborative manner, reduce vulnerability to rainfall variability and drought.”
This will, Du Plessis said, limit the likelihood of future Day Zero-type crises.
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