Disaster fund needed to clean KZN river spill

[Lisbeth]

By GroundUp• 18 August 2019


Countless fish have died following a spill from the Willowton Oil factory on Tuesday. Photos showing this kind of devastation have been taken up to

1.6 million litres of fatty oils and caustic soda poured out of Willowton Oil into the Msunduzi River on Tuesday, leaving a trail of destruction. By Fred Kockett for GROUNDUP

First published by GroundUp

The ecological disaster – one of the worst of its kind to have happened in KwaZulu-Natal – began on Tuesday 13 August when about 1,600 cubic metres (1,6 million litres) of fatty oils and caustic soda poured from the Pietermaritzburg factory of Willowton Oil into the Msunduzi River (also known as the Dusi River), just below the N3. Despite containment measures, the toxic mix soon reached as far as Cato Ridge and the Umgeni River, which flows into Inanda Dam.

Caustic soda is corrosive and can cause burns to living tissue. Combined with fatty oils it becomes soapy, making a river clean-up exceptionally difficult.

Water specialist Dr Anthony Turton from the Centre for Environmental Management at the University of Free State said the clean-up could take several years if the pollution spreads all the way down to Inanda Dam,.

Another leading environmental consultant and river specialist, Pandora Long, agreed. She said she doubted that Willowton and government authorities would be able to address the massive pollution without significant help.

“Willowton should be setting up a disaster fund and mobilising the public and business community to assist. They cannot do this on their own,” said Long. She said Jonsson Workwear had already provided safety gear for clean-up operations in the Lower Mpushini Valley Conservancy about 7km downstream of Willowton.

Nearly all aquatic life in a conservancy area along the river has been wiped out, according to Long.

“I don’t think that they [Willowton] and many others are fully aware of what this pollution spill equates to in ecological costs and financial terms,” said Long.

“If any good can come out of this, it will be to reignite public awareness of the importance of this river – an incredible living system that feeds our economy and biodiversity. People must come together over this disaster for the sake of our rivers and tributary systems.”

Willowton said it was doing everything possible to contain and remediate the affected environment. This included the appointment of emergency response teams Spill Tech and Drizit Environmental.

The company said a vegetable oil storage tank had collapsed on Tuesday and it brought down a tank of caustic soda used to make laundry soap.

Turton said the fact that two fluids were involved in the spill suggested “an industrial accident of a significant scale” that could have been avoided.

He said water-use licences for industrial users required the use of berms or bunds to contain spills of hazardous liquids, as well as formal reporting to the regulating authorities at specified intervals along with site inspections.

“This incident provides evidence of failure of the regulatory process,” said Turton.

The KwaZulu-Natal MEC for Economic Development, Tourism and Environmental Affairs, Nomusa Dube-Ncube, said the incident would be investigated and appropriate action would be taken if there had been negligence.

Photos and video footage of countless dead fish floating in the Msunduzi and Umgeni rivers have gone viral on social media platforms. Footage includes barbel gasping for air as they try to climb out the water on to river banks. Several cows have also reportedly died along the banks of the Msunduzi River but this has yet to be confirmed.

Fearing the risk to human health, the Msunduzi Municipality has warned people to stay away from the Msunduzi and Umgeni rivers. The eThekwini municipality urged people to avoid using water from Inanda Dam and to not let livestock drink contaminated water – a message that appears not to have reached many people living near the dam by Friday. ]1

Willowton’s marketing director, Peter Swaiden, said that Gift of the Givers was assisting with relief by providing water to affected communities.

He said authorities simply did not have the reach and manpower to “get out there”.

Produced for GroundUp and the Sunday Tribune by Roving Reporters. See more photos of the spill here

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article ... ver-spill/

[RogerFraser]

this is a huge disaster and recovery will take years .So many questions about how it actually was allowed to happen ? IMHO due to the sheer scale of this disaster the full impact has not been felt yet as it is still ongoing as the spill is now entering dams .

[Lisbeth]

Rush to save KZN’s uMsunduzi River after disastrous toxic spill
OP-ED
By Fred Kockott for Roving Reporters• 27 August 2019

The race is on to save the uMsunduzi River in KwaZulu-Natal after a massive, toxic spill of oil and caustic soda from Willowton Oil turned the river into a soapy mess, choking oxygen supplies to fish, plants, invertebrates and other aquatic life.

Appointed by the Willowton Group to evaluate the disastrous ecological damage arising from the recent industrial spill from its Pietermaritzburg plant, renowned river ecologist Mark Graham has not minced his words on the impact and the clean-up task ahead.

Graham, the director of GroundTruth, a highly rated environmental consultancy agency focused on water resources, said there had been no need to do autopsies on any dead fish to determine what chemical had caused the massive fish kill.

“It was not as if it was an unknown chemical source caused this. We had a smoking gun and knew what the calibre and type of gunpowder was that was used,” quipped Graham, referring to the industrial spill of 1.6 million litres of edible oil and caustic soda.

Willowton is the producer of household brands such as Sunfoil and Canola cooking oil as well as Sunshine D and D’lite margarines.

And it has not only been fish that have been affected, said Graham, but all forms of aquatic life, probably as far as Inanda Dam, more than 70km from the source of the pollution.

Willowton said the accident occurred when a colossal container collapsed, damaging two others and a bund (pollution containment facility).

The toxic mix spilled into the Baynespruit — a tributary of the uMsunduzi River. This did a couple of things, said Graham. First, it turned river water soapy, interfering with the critical dissolved oxygen absorption across the fish gill membranes. “This prevented the fish from being able to extract what oxygen was in the water. This same problem would also have affected aquatic invertebrates (insects) and other life in the water.”

Like the air we breathe, the survival of aquatic life depends on a sufficient level of oxygen dissolved in water.

“We have recorded low enough dissolved oxygen (DO) to confirm the cause (of deaths), which is also congruent with the characteristic fish behaviour while they were dying,” said Graham.

“It’s much like us sucking in a litre of soapy water into our lungs and then trying to breathe,” said Graham. “The detergent would coat the inside of the lungs, upset some very delicate chemistry at the lung interface with the air and prevent oxygen entering the lung tissues.”

Many fish had attempted to climb out of the water to escape the pollution. Others had jumped several metres out the water on to river embankments.

Graham said while fish were the most obvious and charismatic life form affected, there had been notable impact across the food web.

“We are now assessing these impacts, covering all levels of the aquatic system, from algae through to aquatic invertebrates (insects), algae, crabs and snails.”

Impact across the food web

Graham said this large die-off — possibly up to 80% of river life, say some — had created further problems with the decomposition of dead material causing a “microbial bloom”. This, in turn, was sucking up much of the residual oxygen in the water — a second hit to the few remaining fish and other aquatic life forms.

He said poor land use such as significant illegal sand mining in the lower reaches of the river were also compromising the aquatic ecosystem health and will hamper recovery, as well as ongoing sewage pollution in the upper catchment, mainly out of Pietermaritzburg.

“Fortunately, there has been dilution through the system,” said Graham, referring to steps that Umgeni Water took in flushing the uMsunduzi River with water from Henley Dam immediately after getting news of the disaster.

“This will continue to improve with time and as the summer rains flush the systems. We will be undertaking regular monitoring of the full system for at least a year to chart the recovery,” said Graham.

Duzi Disaster Fund

Graham welcomed the establishment of the Duzi Disaster Fund, a fundraising drive established by the Lower Mpushini Valley Conservancy to assist with the clean-up of the river around the conservancy which is situated less than 7km downstream of the Willowton Oil plant.

But much more needed to be done to restore river health from source to sea, said Graham.

“All efforts to clean up and focus attention on river systems are to be supported,” said Graham.

“However, longer-term initiatives to address the broader catchment degradation, pollution sources and impacts and finally restoration and rehabilitation would ensure a longer-term and more sustainable approach to the situation.”

He commended the work of the Duzi-Umgeni Conservation Trust (DUCT) which has “championed tirelessly” for many years for an ecologically healthy and biologically diverse uMngeni-uMsunduzi river system.

He said it was encouraging that after the spill, Willowton had engaged in discussions with DUCT about establishing a Baynespruit conservancy. The Baynespruit has for decades been rated as one of the six most highly polluted rivers in South Africa.

Willowton’s appointment of Graham as a consultant to evaluate ecological damage of the Duzi disaster and monitor and oversee remedial work has been widely welcomed in environmental circles.

“They could not have got a better person. He is the top riverine ecologist in the country. They will get a truly honest opinion on the real impact of the spill and what needs to be done,” said WildTrust’s recycling and waste operations manager Hannon Langenhoven. But Langenhoven warned:

“As long as we don’t have stricter controls on the continuous and habitual dumping of waste into rivers, the door is always open for big pollution like this.”

DUCT chairman, Dave Still, agreed.

“Sadly, the long-term trend in river health is going in the wrong direction,” said Still.

“This is due to chronic, daily pollution, which in Pietermaritzburg is really bad and getting worse. We really need the leaders of the city of Pietermaritzburg to decide if they have given up on our rivers or whether they are going to make a decision to turn the trend around.”

Still said while the Willowton spill had hit the uMsunduzi river “really hard”, there had been an unexpected positive spin-off in that it had refocused public attention on the health of rivers.

Encouraged by Willowton’s commitment, in principle, to establish a Baynespruit conservancy, Still said: “This may well turn out to be a real positive development arising from last week’s disaster.”

“Once we have an effective structure with a clear vision, money can be raised from a variety of sources. A few hundred thousand per year will do a lot. A few million will do more.

“The key to long-term sustainability is to get those who live and work near streams and rivers to adopt sections of those rivers. That way there is a direct connection between the people involved and the area where the work is done. Costs are lower and benefits are more immediate,” said Still.

This story was produced for Daily Maverick by Roving Reporters.

[Lisbeth]

uMsunduzi River spill: Small-scale farmers worry they will not be compensated for ‘losses’


While authorities warn that livestock should not drink from the polluted uMsunduzi river, people of KwaXimba say it is almost impossible to stop cattle from going to the river.

By Mlu Mdletshe for Roving Reporters• 28 August 2019

Small-scale farmers on the banks of the uMsunduzi River are blaming Pietermaritzburg’s edible oil manufacturer, Willowton Oil, for potential crop failures. They are worried they will not be compensated — and some claim livestock has died as a result of the pollution.


A colossal storage tank at the Willowton factory collapsed, damaging an additional two tanks and causing the bund wall (containment facility) to break.

“While our stormwater system flows into purpose-built containment dams to contain any spillage, they could not withstand the resultant volume,” said Willowton spokesman David Swaiden.

The spill worked its way downstream, turning the Msunduzi and Mgeni rivers into a soapy cauldron of toxicity as far as Inanda Dam, 70km from the plant.

Public warnings were subsequently issued to people not to collect and eat dead fish, let livestock near the water or use it for irrigating crops.

Now people living far downstream fear that their crops will dry out if they are unable to use the river water for irrigation.

Boy dies collecting fish

A 12-year-old herd-boy also drowned in Mboyi in Enkanyezeni village, reportedly while collecting dead fish from the river in spate. This was on Friday, 15 August, not long after Umgeni Water released water from Henley Dam to flush the river. Police in Bishopstowe have confirmed the drowning of Teo Sebetse. The boy is said to be a South African, born to Lesotho parents.

Small-scale farmers worried about their cows

Livestock owners say it has been difficult to keep cattle away from the river and some claim cows have died after drinking soapy, polluted water. But this can’t be confirmed, and some environmentalists are sceptical of these claims.

Although reliable figures are not available and autopsies have yet to be done, in a week-long field trip in the Valley of a Thousand Hills, Roving Reporters met several farmers who demanded that the cattle deaths be investigated.

Leonard Majola, of Mhali in KwaXimba, said he had lost one cow from his herd of 19.

He was unsure whether it had become sick after drinking from the polluted river or whether it had been swept away when the river was in spate.

He said he and other cattle owners in the area received a call from Mboyi, upstream of them, on Friday, August 15, warning that the river was rising. They then hurried to fetch their animals.

KwaXimba overlooks the river and Majola and his fellow farmers could see a “white cloud” floating on the surface. The 70-year-old collected his herd, only realising later when counting the animals in his kraal that one was missing.

He said he was calm at the time, expecting it to return, but it never did. He said his herd had continued to drink from the river — and seemed fine. He said he was now more worried that the spill and resultant massive fish kills could put an end to fishing along his stretch of the river for a long time — a sore loss for many, including his family.

“In this household we just love fish. I fish three to four days a week… catching five to ten carp,” he said.

60-year-old Musa Mhlongo, also from Mboyi, said it had been impossible to prevent his cattle drinking from the river.

He and a few other farmers tried to lock their herds in a field, but the cattle consistently escaped and went to the river, he said.

We received other reports of cattle losses and saw a dead calf lying near the river, but none of this could be positively linked to the spill.

Vegetable-growing at risk

Warnings from authorities that polluted river water could pose a threat to crops is also of concern to small-scale farmers who rely on the nutrient-rich waters of the uMsunduzi and Mgeni rivers for irrigation.

Sipho Mbambo grows vegetables for his family and for a feeding scheme that supplies two schools in Mhali, KwaXimba. He said he had now had to switch from using river water to chlorinated drinking water from tanks to irrigate his garden.

But the tanks have to be refilled and this means the water must be trucked in or brought by pipe from a neighbouring home, both at some cost. He said some of his vegetables were already beginning to shrivel after he had switched to using piped water.

He said his cabbages were nowhere near ready to reap and would not survive long without adequate water.


Small-scale farmers in KwaXimba like Sipho Mlambo are concerned that crops will dry up and die if they are unable to use river water for irrigation. (Photo: Mlu Mdletshe)

“Cabbages require more water than my other vegetables and the water I have left won’t last me very long,” said Mlambo.

The 63-year-old doubted those responsible for the spill would be held to account.

He said: “What will happen is the white man (Willowton) will pay money to the people who are supposed to be fighting for us and this matter will be buried. That we know.”

Willowton responds

Swaiden said the company’s Community Social Responsibility (CSR) team was investigating all impacts of the pollution in affected communities, including allegations of cattle deaths.

“We received one report that a cow had died due to the water quality. An autopsy was done and a full veterinary report supplied in which it was determined that the animal died from advanced protein energy malnutrition, a common nutrient deficiency seen in winter when grass is nutrient-poor,” said Swaiden.

“The vet went on to further assess many cattle along the river’s edge and none showed any signs of illness or disease.”

Swaiden said the Willowton CSR team was also distributing bottled water to communities, assisted by Gift of the Givers.

“We have also distributed JoJo tanks and bulk water to communities whose livestock have been directly affected,” said Swaiden. “This is an ongoing effort and we remain absolutely committed to assisting the affected communities.”

Government response

A spokesperson for the Department of Agriculture has called on people in affected communities to report cases of dead cows so they can be investigated.

The KwaZulu-Natal Department of Economic Development, Tourism and Environmental Affairs said it was working with a multi-disciplinary task team to oversee the river clean-up process, and will in due course, “pronounce on the steps undertaken to rehabilitate the river’s ecosystem and biodiversity”.

“We are exploring all available legal and compliance avenues towards a speedy resolution,” said department spokesman Nathi Olifant. — Additional reporting by Fred Kockott.

This story was produced for GroundUp by Roving Reporters.
Mlu Mdletshe is a Durban University of Technology journalism graduate enrolled on Roving Reporters training programme, Developing Environmental Watchdogs.

[Lisbeth]

Rivers die after oil, chemical spill

Paddy Harper 23 Aug 2019 00:00


Polluted: The Willowton oil spill caused fish to die from a lack of oxygen. (Rogan Ward)

Vukani Mkhize was fishing in the Umgeni River, just below its point of confluence with the Msunduzi River, last Tuesday, when he realised that something had gone very, very wrong.

“The water turned like milk. There was a smell and then the fish started jumping out of the water. Then they started dying, right there,” said Mkhize, who fishes in the Umgeni for a living.

“I stopped fishing right then.
I could see the fish were poisoned and would make people sick if they ate them.”

Since last Tuesday Mkhize, 26, who lives in Manyavu, a small village in KwaXimba, has made a daily trip to the river to see whether the water has cleared.

Every day he has been greeted by the sight and stench of dead fish, killed by the spill of 1.6-million litres of vegetable oil and caustic soda from Willowton Oils in Pietermaritzburg into the Msunduzi River after holding tanks at the factory collapsed. The fish died from a lack of oxygen, according to a toxicology test.

Mkhize, who makes about R1 500 on a good day from selling tilapia, catfish, carp and scalies (yellowfish) that he catches using a cast net, is becoming increasingly desperate. He hasn’t made a cent since last Tuesday, and the only money now to feed his children, Siyamthanda, 6, and Mlekeleli, 3, comes from his grandparents’ social grants.

“I’ve been fishing since I was a small boy. I don’t have a job, so this is how I support my children. People around here buy from me. Some of them take a 25-litre bucket of fish. I catch nice sizes and throw the small ones back in so they grow. Some prefer tilapia. Some like the carp,” he said.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do. All I can do is wait for them to tell us the water is clean. That’s why I came down here.”

Mkhize said he believed Willowton had a responsibility to clean up the river and restock it with fish.

“This river is my life. I don’t have a job. It is all that I have. If whoever did this won’t work with us to fix things, then they must face the consequences,” he said.

By Wednesday this week, when the Mail & Guardian met Mkhize at his regular fishing spot underneath the single gauge bridge at Manyavu, the stench of dead fish and chemicals hung over the river.

The water passing through the weir was still topped with white foam. Dead fish had collected at several bends in the river, the level of which is high for this time of year because of recent rain, their carcasses mingling with plastic packets and bottles.

Jeff Hean from environmental consultants GroundTruth, which has been appointed by Willowton to test the water over the 87km of the two rivers between the spill site in Pietermaritzburg and Inanda Dam, said it could take anything from six months to two years for the river to recover from the disaster.

“It’s bad,” he said. “We expect things to get worse as we work our way upriver to the spill site. The recovery time will depend on how far the spill went and other factors including other pollutants.”

Plastic bags of fish were piled on the side of the road heading out of KwaXimba along the river, ready for collection by clean-up teams appointed by Willowton in the wake of the spill. The teams have been working the most heavily affected areas on both rivers and several tributaries.

Manyavu, on the Dusi Canoe Marathon route between Pietermaritzburg and Durban, is not the only area badly hit by the spill.

At Mkhambathini (formerly known as Camperdown), residents complained that livestock had become ill after drinking contaminated water in the hours immediately after the spill.

“They sent a vet to look at the livestock,” said Simon Mthethwa, who lives about 500m from the Msunduzi. “We don’t know yet what the result is. The river here is full of dead fish. We are scared to let livestock drink the water now.”

David Sweidan, the head of marketing at Willowton’s holding company, Sunfoil, said the company was doing “everything possible” to remediate the affected environment and assist people it had affected. “We deeply regret the accident ... the cause of which is currently under investigation.”


Fisherman Vukani Mkhize has lost his income after the Willowton Oil spill into the Msunduzi River. (Rogan Ward)

The company had appointed two spill response teams from Spilltech and Drizit who had been working with a 100-member clean-up team since last Tuesday. They had managed to remove most of the oil and caustic soda from the river and were now retrieving the dead fish, Sweidan said.

They had also appointed a geohydrologist, a toxicologist and a river health specialist who were working with relevant authorities in the affected areas and others beyond them.

The initial toxicology assessment showed that the bulk of the fish had died from lack of oxygen and not poisoning. They warned that people should still not consume water or fish from the river until further notice.

Sweidan said Sunfoil had, together with humanitarian organisations, been distributing bottled water to people who relied on the river for water.

“Daily engagement and reporting with the authorities is ongoing, with formal reports being prepared in terms of the legislation. We are unequivocally committed to ensuring the impact on communities reliant on the river is minimal and providing necessary remedial actions accordingly,” he said, adding that “the accident is being investigated as a matter of priority”.

People living along the rivers are concerned about the long-term damage caused by the spill, which Pandora Long, of the Lower Mpushini River Valley Conservancy, called “an environmental catastrophe”.

“This is a tragedy. In our conservancy area, all the aquatic life is gone, dead. There are no fish, no invertebrates. Everything has been killed,” she said.

“The clean-up is taking place but we are deeply concerned about the long-term health of the river. The impact is huge. This is a disaster on a human level, on an ecological level, on an ethical level. This river has died, right in front of our eyes.”

Long said although Willowton’s response and that of government departments was welcomed, a disaster fund needed to be set up to ensure the river’s medium and long term recovery.


Mahomed Desai and Juan Tedder of GroundTruth environmental consulting company take water samples from the river. (Rogan Ward)

“We need to work together to ensure that the river system is not only rehabilitated after this disaster, but that it is protected in the longer term,” she said.

Nathi Olifant, spokesperson for the KwaZulu-Natal department of environmental affairs and tourism, said the department was working with local and national government to try to contain the damage and support affected people while the clean up took place.

She added that the spill was being investigated by the national water and environmental affairs departments, with a report into the incident due within 30 days.

[Alf]

Report due within 30 days

Maybe in another country but you can't expect something so quickly in SA

[Richprins]

I wonder if they have insurance against this sort of thing?

[Lisbeth]

Who? The province or the company? If the company, I doubt it, as it is "fraudolent" (for lack of a better word, "self-inflicted" does not sound right either ). I hope for everybody that it's the case Even if they have, it will take ages before they get paid and all the people living off the river will be ruined by then and as there is not much empathy in most of the African population, least of all in the politician......................