On Sunday this inlet pipe was in the harbour car park. Monday it had gone.
Midweek the harbour was clear of pipes, ships and inflatables.
One of the workman told me they had been using Gordons Bay old harbour to assemble the pipeline.
At the weekend the water inlet pipe had been delivered, and that had gone on Monday, taken out to sea by one of the ships moored in the harbour. I'd seen two of the pipes being attached to each other on Monday and being pulled out by an inflatable. They were working into the dark and we could see the lights of the two rig ships all night in the bay.
So, the water inlet is around 800 metres off the coast, the sea water pumped through 800m of pipe to Monwabisi Beach, by the township of Khaeyitsha where it will be processed to create 7 million litres of drinking water every day which will be pumped using underground pipes via a reservoir for Cape Town.
This is the first of 7 such projects and is a month ahead of schedule. They now just need to test the pipe and sea water extraction is working OK and if so the drinking water should come 'on stream' (as it were) in March.
But locals say, compared to the daily water demand in greater Cape Town, what the desalination plants will deliver will be a 'drop in the ocean'. Others forecast the rains will come and make the whole exercise redundant.
We'll see.
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