Day Zero, Cape Town, South Africa

[popeyespappy]

Capetown appear to have similar population to LA and presumably broadly similar water needs.

Probably not. Americans use more of practically everything per capita than anyone else including water. Residential water consumption is Las Angeles county runs about 106 gallons per day per person. That's about 400 liters each per day not including industrial, agricultural or other nonpersonnel uses. That's more than twice the pre-crisis per capita use in Cape Town from all consumption.

On a side note, the US in general has ten times the per capita reservoir capacity of South Africa.