Are We Tapped Out? How Urban Water Utilities Are Adapting to New Impacts

Billions of people worldwide depend on municipal water utilities to deliver clean drinking water and treat their waste. There’s a reason that the word “utility” in English means both an agency or business that provides public services and something that performs consistently, even automatically. What happens when the utility of a utility is under threat? Water utilities are arguably what makes modern cities possible, supplying clean water, treating sewage and industrial waste, securing urban areas as centers of economic growth rather than as cesspools of ill health and disease. Consider Cape Town, South Africa. A city often compared with San Francisco in the US for its optimism, culture, and lifestyle. Cape Town is about a month away from day zero -- the term they use for when their reservoir will absolutely run out of water. In this episode of ClimateReady, we talk to civil engineer Divindy Grant to learn about a project led by Mott MacDonald (www.mottmac.com) to develop resilience standards for water utilities. Tune in to hear more about the ways in which these water service providers are working to ensure that taps continue to flow and toilets continue to flush even as floods, droughts, and sea level rise become more commonplace.

Billions of people worldwide depend on municipal water utilities to deliver clean drinking water and treat their waste. There’s a reason that the word “utility” in English means both an agency or business that provides public services and something that performs consistently, even automatically. What happens when the utility of a utility is under threat? Water utilities are arguably what makes modern cities possible, supplying clean water, treating sewage and industrial waste, securing urban areas as centers of economic growth rather than as cesspools of ill health and disease. Consider Cape Town, South Africa. A city often compared with San Francisco in the US for its optimism, culture, and lifestyle. Cape Town is about a month away from day zero -- the term they use for when their reservoir will absolutely run out of water.

In this episode of ClimateReady, we talk to civil engineer Divindy Grant to learn about a project led by Mott MacDonald to develop resilience standards for water utilities with the World Bank. Tune in to hear more about the ways in which these water service providers are working to ensure that taps continue to flow and toilets continue to flush even as floods, droughts, and sea level rise become more commonplace.