Gershwin Wanneburg
South Africa’s water and sanitation systems could soon face similar pressure to its electricity grid, with serious environmental and health implications, a leading environmental expert has warned.
This comes after a series of sewage spillages in Cape Town resulted in temporary beach closures at Strand, Fish Hoek, Bakoven and Small Bay.
A section of Gordon’s Bay was shut on Thursday. Milnerton Lagoon, Milnerton Estuary Mouth and Lagoon Beach remain closed due to pollution.
The George Municipality’s Blue Flag Herold's Bay and Gwaing River Beach and Mouth have also been closed until further notice due to high pollution levels.
City of Cape Town officials have blamed load shedding for disrupting sewage pumping stations and other infrastructure, resulting in spillages into the City’s waterways. They also said that “inappropriate objects like litter, builders’ rubble and fats… end up in the sewer network and block the flow of sewage and cause overflows and affect pump stations”.
Experts add that ailing infrastructure – a national problem – is also a factor. In addition, the City’s water and sanitation network has not kept up with the needs of a growing population.
“The failure we’re seeing in Eskom is happening with all our sanitation services and all our potable water services and very soon we will have a really, really dire situation in SA equivalent to the Eskom load shedding because of the lack of attention to our sewage and our potable water infrastructure,” said Louise Petrik, Professor Emeritus in UWC’s chemistry department.
Petrik highlighted concerns about the health implications of recent system breakdowns.
“We’ve been using a huge amount of antibiotics and antiseptics for Covid-19 purposes and for diseases such as HIV/Aids etc… Those chemicals as well as very high loads of bacteria are going into our rivers or into our surf zones… We’ve tested the effluents and we’ve found that many of the bacteria are now antibiotic-resistant.
"That means if you get an infection (from the effluent), it’s really likely that our front line antibiotics will not work anymore to help you.”
Dr Jo Barnes, senior lecturer emeritus in the global health department at the University of Stellenbosch, said the City’s water monitoring was flawed and not as transparent as it could be.
“Sometimes samples are taken during high tide or when the sea is looking clean in order to open the beach as fast as possible. That is not necessarily the safest choice. A lot of that pollution gathers in the water under the sand where the children play and dig holes,” Barnes said.
“When you dig a hole in the beach sand, close to the sea, that hole fills with water. That water takes a lot longer to clean, and that’s right there where the beachgoers have contact with disease-causing organisms contained in the spilled sewage.”
Barnes said five years ago, as part of a research project conducted by the Cape’s three biggest universities, she found “abysmal” levels of sewage pollution in the stormwater system in Fish Hoek, where a section of the beach was shut for two days this past week.
She said officials were aware of the results of her tests.
“They’re now blaming load shedding for this and the other. That was a system that was already under pressure five years ago,” Barnes said.
“Municipal officials should inspect the blockages in areas where these problems happen frequently and not only blame poor behaviour of the inhabitants.
“Sewage, never mind what some of the municipal officials are trying to tell you, sewage doesn’t disappear because it goes into the sea. If it goes into the sea for years and years and years, then it starts polluting the seabed and everything around it. The sea is not a delete button.”
In response to questions from Weekend Argus, City of Cape Town officials highlighted actions the municipality are taking to protect residents and the City’s beaches.
Alderman Eddie Andrews, the City’s deputy mayor and mayoral committee member for spatial planning and environment, said: “[The City]... and residents, are all part of the action plan to help reduce sewer overflows in Cape Town. The City manages an extensive sewer network, which includes over 10 000km of pipes and pump stations.”
On the possibility of further closures, Andrews said they could not pre-empt whether sewer-related matters will affect beaches and to what extent, as each incident has its own dynamics and happen for different reasons.
“However, residents are assured that when incidents do occur, various City departments are activated to respond and address these situations in the shortest possible time frame.”
He added: “[There] are various reasons that cause sewer overflows, including load-shedding and foreign objects blocking the sewer network and affecting pump station operations.”
Petrik suggested a dashboard where residents could check the pollution levels at a particular beach on a particular day.
Weekend Argus.