Engineers rush to stem foul flow from collapsed sewer

Metro engineers and contracted plumbers are set to instal a temporary pipe to bridge a collapsed section of the main Motherwell sewerage line adjacent to Grahamstown Road today.

A team of metro engineers and plumbing contractors pinpointed the breakage yesterday after the sewage spill – which began on Sunday – swelled to crisis proportions.

Zwartkops Conservancy spokeswoman Jenny Rump said effluent had pushed out from the Markman stormwater canal opposite waste management facility EnviroServ and had been flowing like a river down Grahamstown Road into the Swartkops Estuary when she got there about 8pm.

“It is the worst sewage spill into the river I have ever seen,” she said.

The Motherwell sewage siphon pipe runs from the township through the Brickfields pre-treatment plant, under Grahamstown Road, across the Markman canal and then southeast to Fishwater Flats waste water treatment works.

Yesterday, metro infrastructure and engineering northern section manager Rodney Myburgh and his team were surveying the latest collapse of the sewerage line at a point about halfway between the pre-treatment plant and the Aloes community.

He pointed out how the 600mm pipe had sheered off on one side, leaving a 20m gap before the next section where it was supposed to run on.

The sewage was pouring out the severed pipe, straight into the canal.

Myburgh said the problem would be tackled in two phases.

“We will be slotting in a temporary pipe to provide immediate relief and that should be in place by tomorrow [today].

“At the same time we will take some gravel and lime down to the Aloes community to soak up the puddles and kill germs as much as possible.
“Then we need to start putting in a permanent new section of PVC plastic pipe to replace this collapsed old asbestos cement section.”

A back actor will be deployed to excavate and gabions and other support structures will be embedded to take the weight of the new pipe. The whole job should take three to four weeks.

Rump has called for the entire sewerage line from the pre-treatment plant to Fishwater Flats to be replaced.

The metro has said replacement “is a long-term intervention we will embark on”.

Half a kilometre south down Grahamstown Road, the Markman canal winds past the impoverished Aloes community, a cluster of 30 homes, before exiting into the estuary through a pool covered in duckweed, which is a tell-tale sign of sewage pollution.

Community leader Eileen Leander, 39, said the sewage flow on Tuesday night had been the worst she had ever seen.

“We were worried when it kept rising. People were vomiting and getting headaches from the smell,” she said.

Residents need to cross the canal to reach the bus stop and the Rose Lane Congregational Church, and children to get to the playground, she said.

“We have long been crying for a bridge, but there is none so people walk through the sewage. But it gets on your skin it leaves pimples that make you scratch.”

Despite the risk, residents were still fishing yesterday for tigers and steenbras in the estuary where the canal exited.

“I would not eat those fish but people need the food and the money which they get if they sell them,” she said.