A titanic plan is floated to ease Cape Town drought, by towing an iceberg from Antarctica
Salvage expert says the plan involving an iceberg 1km long could produce 150 million litres of fresh water every day for a year
It is a plan as crazy as the situation is desperate – towing icebergs from Antarctica to Cape Town to supply fresh water to a city in the grip of drought.
Earlier this year, Cape Town came within weeks of shutting off all its taps and forcing residents to queue for water rations at public standpipes.
The cut-off was narrowly averted as people scrambled to reduce their water usage and Autumn rains saved the day. But the threat is expected to return to the coastal South African city again next year and beyond.
Sloane suggests wrapping the iceberg in a textile insulation skirt to stop it melting and using a supertanker and two tugboats to drag it 2,000km to Cape Town using prevailing ocean currents.
The idea sounds crazy. But if you look at the fine details, it is not so crazy
The iceberg, carefully selected by drones and radiography scans, would be about one kilometre in length, 500 metres across and up to 250 metres deep, with a flat, tabletop surface.