The Western Cape and the City of Cape Town experienced a severe drought between 2015 and 2019, resulting in a sudden increase in the number of boreholes and well points that were created. Associated with this is an unquantifiable increase in the number of groundwater users and the volume of groundwater abstracted in the City of Cape Town. Groundwater is typically a fall-back resource in times of drought. Hence unmonitored and unregulated abstraction of groundwater, especially under an uncertain changing climate, poses a risk to this water supply source.

In 2019, WWF appointed the hydrogeology consultants GEOSS South Africa to establish a residential groundwater monitoring network in two pilot areas in Cape Town. This report gives an insight into the water-based ‘lay of the land’, or geohydrology, of the two study areas and the findings and next steps from this research.