Icebergs Could Float to the Rescue of South Africa Water Crisis

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Marine salvage experts are floating a plan to tug icebergs from Antarctica to South Africa's drought-hit Cape Town to help solve the region's worst water shortage in a century.

Salvage master Nick Sloane told Reuters he was looking for government and private investors for a scheme to guide huge chunks of ice across the ocean, chop them into a slurry and melt them down into millions of liters of drinking 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, who led the refloating of the capsized Italian passenger liner Costa Concordia in 2014.

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.

Tough water restrictions are already in place and 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.

Cape Town-based 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 then cut into the ice, producing a slurry and forming a saucer structure that will speed up the natural process, he said.