Cape Town Mayor Patricia De Lille will visit the Steenbras Catchment on Sunday to inspect the aquifer drilling exploratory work being conducted.

The pilot project will allow for the abstraction of water from the Table Mountain Group Aquifer (TMGA). “Contractors are on site conducting exploratory work for drilling into the TMGA for additional water. This is part of the City’s commitment to doing everything possible to bring additional supply online while the water saving efforts of Capetonians must continue and increase as more people still need to come on board to save and avoid Day Zero‚” spokesperson for the mayor Zara Nicholson said.

Nicholson said that the first phase of the project will produce 10 million litres of water a day‚ however the City will closely monitor the TMGA project to minimise over-abstraction and environmental damage.

On Thursday De Lille described what life could be like after "day zero" - if dams supplying the city reach critical levels.

People will have to make do with 25 litres of water per day for washing‚ cooking and personal hygiene if dam levels drop below 13.5% in Cape Town.

In a bid to stave off the impact of this potential crisis‚ the provincial government has already started drilling boreholes at some state hospitals.

"I want to bring you into my confidence to tell you what will happen if day zero arrives. Dam levels must at least be at 13.5%. If they go below that‚ that is the day we will turn off the taps‚" said De Lille on Thursday.

"We have to exclude the densely populated areas like the townships. If we turn the taps off there‚ we face significant risks in those areas like disease."

The rest of Cape Town will have to collect water from 200 sites around the city‚" said De Lille.

She said police and the defence force would be on standby. Officials had predicted that "day zero" would arrive in March 2018 but water-saving endeavours have pushed that date back to May 2018.