Pollution pouring into Swartkops Estuary

Pollution is pouring down the Markman stormwater canal into the Swartkops Estuary, damaging one of Nelson Mandela Bay’s prime assets and highlighting the country’s shocking water management compliance levels.

The evidence on Wednesday morning was there for all to see.

Just off Dibanisa Road on the outskirts of Motherwell, a tower of noxious foam beneath a gungy brown waterfall splashing down into a fast-flowing stream gave rise to a sewage stench so powerful it was hardly bearable to stand on the bank of the canal 10m up.

A hundred metres away, on the brow of the hill above the canal, shacks were visible in a clump of scraggy valley thicket.

Speaking on site during an oversight tour hosted by the Bluewater Bay and Swartkops Ratepayer’s Association and led by the Swartkops Conservancy, DA Eastern Cape leader Nqaba Bhanga said he knew the area well.

When he was a boy he and his friends used to walk from their home in Kwazakhele to the nearby Aloes waste site to scavenge for chocolates discarded by a local manufacturer, he recalled.

“As a child I would probably want to play in that foam and would have got sick.

“I would not have known the threat to my health as I’m sure the children in that shack there don’t either.

“There is no rain but this stuff is pouring down this stormwater canal.

“We need metro inspectors to check the factories in Markman for what they may be putting into the system and also the communities like Wells Estate from where some of this sewage must be coming.

“It does not seem as if City Hall understands or cares about the issue here but it must be fixed and we are going to be raising it in the provincial legislature and in the city council.”

DA MP and spokesperson for water and sanitation Emma Powell, who was also part of the group, said the pollution was a sign of mismanagement and skewed priorities.

“It’s an indication of government’s failure to prioritise protection of the environment.

“It’s an indication of the critical lack of maintenance of infrastructure.

“And it is happening in a void when we know that not a single waste water system has been assessed for compliance since 2016 in terms of government’s Green Drop regulatory standards.”

The conservancy’s deputy chairperson,  Dale Clayton, said alarms installed in municipal pump stations, designed to signal when there was a problem and effluent was building up, were sometimes faulty.

“At other times, especially if the signal comes on a Friday afternoon, the response only comes on Monday morning at best and by that time there’s already a crisis.

“We need equipment to be regularly and rigorously checked and we need a 24-hour response capacity to properly maintain our sewage system.”

On the last stop of the tour, at the foot of the Motherwell Canal, Zwartkops Conservancy committee member Jenny Rump explained how the artificial reed bed installed there in 2010 was successfully purifying the water before it entered the estuary.

“If we could have one of these at the bottom of each of our canals and next to each of the waste water treatment works in Uitenhage and Despatch it would make a huge difference.”

Conservancy chair Frank Collier closed the tour by explaining the conservancy’s project to have the estuary declared a special site to be protected under the international Ramsar Convention on Wetlands.

“It would capitalise especially on our rich bird life and could mean great things for tourism and jobs that would be created as a result.”

The project had proceeded well and had been approved in 2015 by the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality but since then it had been derailed by pollution, he said.

Metro spokesperson Mthubanzi Mniki said on Wednesday evening that a metro team would check the situation.

“We will test the effluent with the aim of tracing the source and stopping the flow.”