Desalination and recycled water in Cape Town
Two of Cape Town's planned new sources don't need rain at all: seawater, and wastewater purified to drinking standard.
Updated 4 November 2026
A permanent desalination plant
The City plans a permanent seawater desalination plant at Paarden Eiland, expected to produce 50 to 70 million litres of drinking water a day by about 2030. For scale, the City reported use of about 740 million litres a day in a week of 2022, and close to 1 100 million litres a day in the heatwaves of the summer before.
In 2024 the City began detailed feasibility studies on how to build, finance and run it, including a possible partnership with a private company. An independent panel of local and international desalination experts advises it on the project.
Purified recycled water
The planned Faure New Water Scheme would take treated wastewater from the Zandvliet works and purify it to drinking standard: 70 to 100 million litres a day.
The water would pass through several separate treatment steps, including ozonation, carbon filtration, ultrafiltration and ultraviolet treatment, and be tested against national and international standards. This is called direct potable reuse. It is in planning, and the City has consulted the public on who should run it.
Why they matter
Both would give Cape Town water that doesn't depend on winter rain. Neither would replace the dams, but together they would make the city less exposed to a run of dry winters like 2015 to 2017.
They are part of a wider plan, alongside groundwater and clearing invasive plants from the catchments, to add about 300 million litres a day.