As Cape Town edged towards the feared “Day Zero” during its 2018 water crisis, engineers and policymakers analysed ideas that ranged from large-scale desalination to groundwater extraction. Among these, one of the ambitious proposals came from Nick Sloane, the South African salvage expert who is best known for leading the recovery of the Costa Concordia cruise ship. According to the BBC , Sloane suggested towing a 100-million-tonne Antarctic iceberg around 2,700 km from the Southern Ocean to South Africa, arguing that around 63% of the ice could survive the voyage if protected with a specially designed geotextile skirt. However, this proposal was never implemented, but it did spark a debate over whether huge icebergs could one day become emergency freshwater reservoirs for water-stressed cities.
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