As a water crisis looms in Cape Town, could it happen in Canada?
The city of Cape Town, South Africa is under extreme water rationing and heading towards complete depletion of its municipal water supply.
By University CommunicationsWhen Day Zero — the day the tap runs dry — arrives, it will be the first major city in the world to run out of water. Could this happen in Canada? If so, how might we prevent it?
These are the questions being asked by John Pomeroy, director of the U of S-led Global Water Futures Program, in a recent piece in The Conversation.
We think of ourselves as the water wealthy country, but Canada is not immune to water shortages or disasters, said Pomeroy, the Canada Research Chair in Water Resources and Climate Change and Director of the Centre for Hydrology at the U of S.
Drought has ravaged much of the world in recent decades, and water shortages and disasters such as drought, forest fires and flooding has left millions of Canadians reeling from either insufficient or excessive water.