Iceberg can bring some relief to South Africa’s capital, which suffers from the drinking water’s deficit, said Nick Sloane, a salvage professional who helped drag the stranded Costa Concordia cruise ship out of the Mediterranean. According to the experts, forced iceberg’s arriving could rescue Cape Town from its longstanding drought, ScienceAlert reported.
Iceberg is a huge resource for drinking water, reminds a salvage master Nick Sloane who is looking for government and private investors for a scheme to guide huge chunks of ice across the ocean. Mr Sloane offers to chop icebergs into a slurry and melt them down into millions of litres of water.
“We want to show that if there is no other source to solve the water crisis, we have another idea no one else has thought of yet,”
said Sloane after South Africa has declared a national disaster over the drought that hit its southern and western regions after 2015 and 2016 turned into two of the driest years on record.
How to hijack an iceberg: South Africa is looking for an additional resource of drinking water
Cape Town authorities have warned that taps could run dry altogether as soon as next year if winter rains do not come to the rescue of the port city’s 4 million residents who are aware of the tough water restrictions. Mr Sloane said his team could wrap passing icebergs in fabric skirts to protect them and reduce evaporation. Large tankers could then guide the blocks into the Benguela Current that flows along the west coast of southern Africa.
A milling machine would then cut into the ice, producing a slurry and forming a saucer structure that will speed up the natural process, he said.
A single iceberg “could produce about 150 million litres per day for about a year,” around 30 percent of the city’s needs, said Sloane, a director at the U.S. marine salvage firm Resolve Marine.
According to Mr Sloane who is also Cape Town resident, he was planning to hold a conference later this month to try and sell the $130 million project to city officials and investors. The city council was not immediately available for comment.
