The State of The Rivers/Oceans/Water/Air

[Richprins]

[Lisbeth]

The below is not relevant to southern African, but will most likely have consequences on the whole continent.

Egyptian envoy to meet Ramaphosa to lobby against Ethiopian dam

By Peter Fabricius• 19 April 2021

With tension mounting over Ethiopia’s construction of a giant dam on the Nile, Egypt’s foreign minister is to meet President Ramaphosa in Pretoria on Tuesday to seek support for Cairo’s objection to Addis Ababa’s unilateral filling of the reservoir.

Egyptian officials said foreign minister Sameh Shoukry would carry a message to President Cyril Ramaphosa from Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, who is trying to mobilise international action to pre-empt Ethiopia from proceeding with the second filling of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) during the next rainy season in July.

Shoukry also visited Kenya and Comoros on Monday and was due also to travel to Tunisia, Niger, Senegal and Democratic Republic of Congo on a seven-nation African tour to try to drum up support for Egypt’s demands, the officials said.

Egypt seems to be trying, for a second time in a year, to get the UN Security Council to take up its dispute with Ethiopia over the 74 billion cubic metre GERD that Ethiopia is building on the Blue Nile, upstream of Egypt and Sudan, to generate 6.45 gigawatts of hydro-electric power.

Egypt depends on the Nile for more than 90% of its drinking water and fears the dam will substantially reduce its supply. Sudan is also worried about the impact of the dam. Both have been seeking a legal agreement that would bind Ethiopia on how much water it can retain or release. But after 16 months of negotiations, Addis Ababa has refused to be legally bound.

On Sunday Shoukry wrote to the UN Security Council, urging the international community to persuade Ethiopia not to take any action on the dam before reaching such a legally binding agreement with Egypt and Sudan.

He warned that failure to reach an agreement would harm the water interests and security of Egypt and Sudan and increase tensions throughout East Africa and the Horn of Africa.

This failure would also “constitute a serious threat to international peace and security”.

Though Egyptian officials would not divulge the precise contents of El-Sisi’s message to Ramaphosa and the six other African leaders Shoukry is meeting, his characterisation of the GERD dispute as a threat to international peace and security suggests that he is seeking support for the dispute to be referred to the UN Security Council.

The Security Council’s mandate is specifically to address threats to international peace and security. After six months of failed negotiations with Ethiopia and Sudan under US mediation, Egypt tried to refer the dispute to the UN Security Council in 2020.

But in July, President Ramaphosa, who was then chairing the African Union (AU), intervened to persuade the three negotiating countries that GERD was an African issue that should be solved by Africans.

The countries agreed to refer the dispute to the AU and South Africa, as chair, led the mediation. Ethiopia immediately proceeded to fill part of the dam, though it is still under construction. Egypt and Sudan protested vehemently, but agreed to proceed with negotiations.

However, South Africa also failed to broker a deal.

When South Africa handed over the chair of the AU to DRC in February 2021, Egypt and Sudan tried to widen the mediation to include the UN, US and European Union, in addition to the AU, but Ethiopia rejected this.

The AU mediation continued, under DRC, but another round of negotiations in Kinshasa earlier this month also failed to resolve the dispute.

El-Sisi then rattled sabres, warning that “I am telling our brothers in Ethiopia, let’s not reach the point where you touch a drop of Egypt’s water, because all options are open.

“We have witnessed the cost of any confrontation,” El-Sisi added, without elaborating.

Sudan’s irrigation minister Yasser Abbas, meanwhile, also said all options were open, but only mentioned referring the dispute to the UN Security Council if Ethiopia embarked on a second filling of the dam without agreement among the three countries.

Daily Maverick approached Ramaphosa’s office to confirm Tuesday’s meeting with Shoukry, but had received no reply at the time of publication. DM

[Richprins]

Hydropower is the best and cleanest by far!

[Lisbeth]

Sure, but if they cut off the river, all the countries to the north will be without water. Egypt is living off the Nile.

[Lisbeth]

One of the World’s New 7 Wonders Of Nature, the iconic Table Mountain rises above the bustling metropolis of Cape Town, a rocky beacon bordered by office blocks, roads, and train stations on one side, and the icy shores of the Atlantic Ocean on the other. As the city grows, human activity now threatens to further disrupt this isolated mountain ecosystem, the sensitive freshwater streams that meander down the mountain, and the unique species that call it home, leaving it isolated, disconnected, and vulnerable to change.

The Critically Endangered Table Mountain Ghost Frog epitomises the isolation of the mountain. This frog is now restricted to just six perennial streams on the mountain, having vanished from two others in the last 30 years resulting from the spread of alien and invasive plants and extensive path development for tourism. The remaining six streams are facing similar threats.



This is but one example of many species all over the world whose habitats are fragmented and disappearing at a rapid rate. The Endangered Wildlife Trust values nature as the foundation of our resilience and well-being and works tirelessly to ensure that, while necessary human activity and development must continue, we promote considered and informed planning, retain our immense diversity of wild species and wild places, protect the ecosystems on which people depend, and encourage responsible and sustainable use of natural resources.

Everything that we eat, use, power our phones with, make clothes from, and everything else you can think of ultimately comes from the Earth, from nature. We may not be able to restore all ecosystems and return everything to the Earth, but we can make conscious decisions to buy and use products that are biodegradable or reusable, live more sustainably, and give back to each other and nature in other ways.

This Earth Day, show your love for others, and the Earth, by donating to the EWT here and, in doing so, expand your reach exponentially to benefit everyone who relies on its natural resources.

Much more here: https://mailchi.mp/ewt/happy-earth-day?e=113daa1376

[Lisbeth]

South Africa’s rivers of sewage: More than half of SA’s treatment works are failing

By Steve Kretzmann, Nompumelelo Mtsweni, Peter Luhanga and Nombulelo Damba• 26 April 2021


Sewage runs down a street in Dunoon, a township in Cape Town. Sewage spillages and overflows are rife in the area. Photo: Peter Luhanga

Billions of litres of poorly treated or untreated sewage, industrial and pharmaceutical wastewater are spewed into our rivers and oceans. By the government’s own admission, 56% of the country’s 1,150 treatment plants are ‘in poor or in critical condition’. But this investigation reveals further that 75% of 910 municipality-run wastewater treatment works achieved less than 50% compliance to minimum effluent standards last year.


Christina Malgas has to daily sweep away sewage and debris that runs along the kerb outside her front door in the township of Dunoon, Cape Town. (Photo: Peter Luhanga)

Air freshener is the only defence 67-year-old Christina Malgas has against the constant stench inside her house. The smell is caused by raw sewage that spills from a manhole cover up the road, then flows past her home in Dunoon, a Cape Town township.

Sometimes municipal workers or contractors come to clear the sewage pipes of blockages. But within days, the raw waste is always flowing again.

“It stinks. We… eventually become accustomed to the smell of faeces. The stench permeates all the rooms in the house. There is no escape.”

Malgas shares her home with eight foster children; the youngest is just one and the eldest 13. The children constantly develop rashes on their skin. She believes this is because of the filthy conditions outside their home.

Malgas’ story is, sadly, far from unique.

Millions of people across South Africa face the health, economic and recreational effects of wastewater pollution caused by a nationwide sewage treatment and disposal crisis.

Daily, billions of litres of sewage spill across streets and gutters.

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But this is only one aspect of the massive health and environmental issues the country faces: more than half of the country’s wastewater plants that are meant to treat sewage before releasing it back into the environment are failing. A worrying number are “in a state of decay”.

It’s almost impossible to obtain a full picture of sewer network failures in South Africa’s cities and the towns – this would require approaching 234 municipalities individually for information. Not all record the number of reported sewage spillages; Cape Town is a rare exception.

National data on the functioning of wastewater treatment works and their adherence to sewage treatment standards, however, do exist. Municipalities are responsible for operating wastewater treatment works and must submit monthly reports to the national Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) on the quality of the effluent they release into rivers and, in coastal towns, sometimes directly into the ocean. This is reflected on the department’s Integrated Regulatory Information System (Iris) dashboard.


A screenshot of the national Department of Water and Sanitation map showing compliance of waste water treatment works across South Africa. The red markers indicate treatment plants where compliance to minimum wastewater treatment standards is ‘bad’. (Source: http://ws.dwa.gov.za)

An analysis of data scraped from this dashboard is damning: more than half of all South Africa’s sewage treatment works are failing. Each day they spew billions of litres of poorly treated or entirely untreated sewage, industrial and pharmaceutical wastewater into rivers and oceans. By the national DWS’s own admission, 56% of the country’s 1,150 treatment plants are “in poor or in critical condition”. Of these, 265 are “in a state of decay”, says department spokesperson Sputnik Ratau.

But the department’s admission does not reveal the full extent of the rot. The Iris dashboard data reveals that 691, or 75% of 910 municipality-run wastewater treatment works in South Africa achieved less than 50% compliance to minimum effluent standards in 2020.

Even the smallest local municipalities have more than one wastewater treatment works under their jurisdiction. Bitou, in the Western Cape, is the only one of the country’s 144 municipalities responsible for operating wastewater treatment works which met acceptable standards for effluent quality in 2020.

This failure, and the resultant contamination of river catchments, has been ongoing for years, even decades. But Ratau says only two municipalities have faced court interdicts brought by the DWS; a third municipality faces court action.

The data make it plain: South Africa is up s**t’s creek with a broken paddle.


Effluent from the wastewater treatment works in East London is used as a swimming pool on hot days for nearby settlement youngsters whose municipal pool is derelict. (Photo: Nombulelo Damba)


Municipal councillor Hyrin Ruiters at the sewage collection dam in the small town of Zoar, situated in the arid Little Karoo region of South Africa’s Western Cape. Equipment failures have resulted in the raw sewage overflowing directly into a nearby river. (Photo: Steve Kretzmann)


An unused series of sludge dams for purifying sewage in the town of Zoar, situated in the arid Little Karoo region of South Africa’s Western Cape, results in up to 800,000 litres of raw sewage overflow into the Nels River daily. (Photo: Steve Kretzmann)

Reliant on water from a polluted river

“Clearly, there’s something wrong with this water,” says Nobantu Samka. She is talking about the river that runs through the town of Butterworth in the Eastern Cape.

Samka and her wheelchair-bound 18-year-old daughter live in a prefabricated house in a temporary relocation area. They are one of 300 households the municipality moved between the river and an industrial area 12 years ago to make way for a mall which still has not materialised.

She is unemployed, apart from what little income she makes as a sangoma (traditional healer) and receives from her daughter’s disability grant of about R1,800 per month. Like many of her neighbours, Samka keeps chickens and pigs.

“I remember there was a time we found pigs that had died,” she says in her mother tongue, isiXhosa. She and her neighbours believed it was due to the pollution of the Gcuwa River, which they rely on as a water source. Sewage and grey water flow through the streets and a Google Earth image shows the water flowing past the temporary relocation area stained luminous green from an unknown pollution source.



Although Samka and her neighbours have access to municipal standpipes situated throughout the settlement, the safe drinking water does not flow out the town’s taps for days, sometimes weeks, at a time. They are forced to use the river for washing and drinking water.

With no other easily available water source, the death of the pigs did not stop them from using the river; they merely ensured that they boiled it before using it for drinking or cooking.

But the cost of electricity or fuel for boiling water is prohibitive for Samka, as it is for many of her neighbours in a municipality with an employment rate of 16.9%.

The river receives contaminated water and sewage from the informal settlement and town as it flows past Samka. Then it picks up a further 6 million litres of poorly treated or untreated wastewater effluent per day from the treatment plant a few hundred metres downstream.

Amathole District Municipality spokesperson Nonceba Madikizela-Vuso admits the water in the Gcuwa River as it flows past lower Butterworth “is definitely not safe to drink” due to waste emanating from the town itself. However, she denies that the quality of effluent from the treatment plant added to the pollution levels, saying the effluent was treated with chlorine.

But data on the Iris dashboard show that during 2020 the Butterworth plant consistently and drastically failed to meet minimum standards for microbiological, chemical or physical compliance of its treated effluent.

The plant’s failure is ongoing despite award-winning reporting in 2019 by Daily Dispatch reporter Bongani Fuzile that revealed independent tests showing 540,000 colony-forming units (CFUs) of E.coli per 100ml of water downstream of the town. The minimum standard is 1,000 CFUs per 100ml.

When asked what had been done following the Daily Dispatch’s reporting, DWS spokesperson Ratau said: “The department conducted an investigation within the Butterworth area following complaints received of suspected water pollution… and results confirmed that the water used by the community of Cuba in Butterworth is not from sewage spillages, rather underground seepage water.”

Ratau said that DWS has issued a notice of intention to issue a directive to the local municipality for the failure of sewage pump stations in Butterworth potentially impacting negatively on Gcuwa River: “The department continues to engage the municipality concerning possible solutions to the presence of pollutants as well as the social issues (informal squatter settlements) affecting the Gcuwa River.”

Butterworth’s sorry story is echoed across the Eastern Cape: 85% of the province’s 132 wastewater treatment plants do not meet minimum effluent guidelines on a regular basis.

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The pollution of the Vaal

About 950km north of Butterworth is South Africa’s economic hub, the Gauteng province, and its largest city, Johannesburg.

Established in 1886 following the discovery of gold along the Witwatersrand hills, Johannesburg, unlike major cities around the world, is not situated at a water source. Its water comes from the Vaal Dam, about 100km away.

The Vaal River is South Africa’s third-largest river and has, for years, received about 150 million litres per day of poorly treated, and in many cases, raw sewage from the industrial towns situated along its banks.

A recent report by the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) on the sewage problem in the Vaal River was released in February. It revealed that 19 million people who rely on the river for drinking, domestic and commercial use are affected by the pollution.

The SAHRC initiated an inquiry as continued failures by multiple levels of government to address the issue has led to the pollution becoming a human rights issue. The commission recommended that government officials should face criminal charges.

According to the report, the wastewater pollution emanates from wastewater treatment works in the Emfuleni municipality, south of Johannesburg and encompassing the industrial towns of Vereeniging and Vanderbijlpark situated alongside the Vaal River and Rietspruit, which is a direct tributary.

Following media reports on the pollution caused by untreated wastewater, the commission conducted a site inspection in September 2018 and identified a situation similar to Dunoon in Cape Town. They found “raw, untreated sewage flowing in the streets, homes, graveyards and also flowing into the Vaal River, the Vaal Dam, the Barrage and the Rietspruit (referred to collectively as “the Vaal”) (sic). The inspectors also discovered “children swimming in, and consuming, polluted waters in the area of a school”.

The Emfuleni municipality, situated within Gauteng, conceded the pollution was due to its failure to maintain wastewater infrastructure. But, the commission noted in its report, the national DWS failed to hold the municipality to account, as it is required to do by national legislation, despite the pollution being ongoing for years.

“In the absence of timely and effective response from the multiple spheres of government, Gauteng’s most vital water resource may very well have been irreparably damaged,” states the report.



Here, though, the data may be questionable. The Iris dashboard data show that Leeuwkuil, one of the four treatment plants in Emfuleni, achieved almost 100% compliance across indicators in 2020. But the commission report notes that Leeuwkuil was one of the wastewater treatment plants prioritised by the South African National Defence Force when its engineers were brought in as an emergency measure in 2018 to try to curtail the pollution. This brings the veracity of the data into question: by itself, it indicates a sufficiently functioning wastewater treatment plant surrounded by failing infrastructure, which is unlikely to be the case.

Additionally, independent testing by non-government organisation AfriForum found Leeuwkuil failed minimum standards from 2017 to 2019, the last year their test results are available. This means even the treatment plants that seem to be meeting minimum national wastewater effluent guidelines on the Iris dashboard require further investigation.

The tip of the iceberg

The failure to properly treat sewage is not just an environmental issue. It’s also a health disaster in the making.

Cheryl Shultz, IT Project Manager in the DWS’s macroplanning directorate, says South Africa’s effluent quality guidelines measure microbiological compliance (levels of E.coli bacteria), chemical compliance, which refers to “Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), Ammonia, Nitrites and Nitrates, Ortho-Phosphates, etc.”, and physical compliance, which refers to pH, suspended solids and electrical conductivity.

But the standards against which these indicators are measured are themselves insufficient and have been under revision since 1996, says Dr Jo Barnes, senior lecturer emeritus in the Division of Community Health at Stellenbosch University.

Barnes believes there is no political will to implement higher standards. She explains that there are direct and indirect human health impacts of coming into contact with untreated or poorly treated sewage.

The direct impact of contact with sewage can result in gastro-intestinal illness, ear, nose or threat infections which manifest after a 24-hour incubation period. It is during this incubation period that people who have become infected return to school or work and infect others.

The indirect effects, she says, are much more frightening and are ignored by authorities.

To begin with, E.coli is largely an indicator organism: it points to the presence of other pathogens in the water.

“E.coli stands for all the pathogens, the whole book of micro-organisms,” says Barnes. These include Rotavirus, Hepatitis E, and Norwalk virus, Salmonella, and the fungus Candida.

But E.coli is a poor indicator, she says, as it dies off quickly; low E.coli levels, then, do not necessarily mean the presence of other pathogens is low.

The poor treatment of wastewater is also contributing to what she terms the “silent pandemic” of antibiotic resistance. If wastewater is poorly or inadequately treated with chemicals such as chlorine (one of the chemicals measured in the chemical compliance indicator), then it only kills the weaker micro-organisms. The stronger ones survive, creating generations that are increasingly more difficult to treat.

“We are slowly running out of drugs for treatment,” Barnes warns.

Particularly in large urban areas, wastewater is not just domestic sewage. It also includes industrial and hospital wastewater – and even treatment that measures up to national minimum standards almost certainly can’t eliminate these from the effluent released back into the environment.

“What keeps me awake at night is when we mix industrial effluent with human sewage,” says Barnes. “What is going to happen to the pathogens as they mix with thousands of chemicals from factories?

“We don’t know what happens when chemical cocktails hit microbiological cocktails.”

Everyone is affected

The DWS is well aware of the nationwide failure to properly treat wastewater.

The latest iteration of the National Water and Sanitation Master Plan was published in October 2018 and quantifies the extent of infrastructure failure and resultant pollution.

The report opens with this statement: “South Africa is facing a water crisis caused by insufficient water infrastructure maintenance and investment, recurrent droughts driven by climatic variation, inequities in access to water and sanitation, deteriorating water quality, and a lack of skilled water engineers. This crisis is already having significant impacts on economic growth and on the wellbeing of everyone in South Africa.”

The document states that over a 12-year period, between 1999 and 2011, “the extent of main rivers in South Africa classified as having a poor ecological condition increased by 500%, with some rivers pushed beyond the point of recovery”.

Additionally, more than half of all wetlands, which are crucial environmental resources, have been lost. Of those that remain, a third are “already in poor condition”.

A rapidly growing and urbanising population, coupled with the climate crisis driving the country to a warmer and drier future, also means there will be less water available. Current trends point to a 17% deficit of water availability and water needs by 2030.

The master plan sets out a detailed list of actions needed to stem pollution, conserve and protect environmental resources, and repair and maintain ageing infrastructure, all requiring R33-billion more per year than currently budgeted. Deadlines have been attached to these actions, with 14 such actions due to have been implemented by 2020. Questions sent to the DWS asking whether implementation had indeed taken place received no response despite a follow-up call and the questions being resent.

World-class city’s rivers run with sewage


Christina Malgas tries to quell the constant presence of sewer water running along the kerb outside her front door in Dunoon, Cape Town, by sweeping it towards the nearest stormwater grate. (Photo: Peter Luhanga)

Back in Cape Town, Christina Malgas aims her small can of air freshener in a futile attempt to mask the seemingly insurmountable stench. She knows that city authorities have consistently blamed residents for disposing of foreign objects in the sewer system. But she’s sceptical. Official state-built houses like hers are supplied with wheelie bins to discard their rubbish for collection by the municipality.

“We [who own state-supplied housing] don’t dump in sewers. If we dump, these things will cause blockages and sewage will overflow into our homes. So, why should we dump in there?”

She concedes that people who live in backyards (informal shacks owners of formal houses erect in their backyard and rent out) may dump rubbish into sewers and stormwater drains. There are also thousands of people who live in informal settlements surrounding Dunoon who may illegally dispose of waste into sewers.

Xanthea Limberg, the City of Cape Town’s mayoral committee member responsible for overseeing informal settlements, water and waste, has stated there are up to 400 sewage spills reported across the city daily. Some may be repeat reporting, whereas other spills may go unreported. The City’s recent Inland Water Quality Report found that 24% of these overflows and spillages are caused by maintenance issues like collapsed pipes and root growth. The remaining 76% are due to the illegal disposal of waste in sewers.

Away from its busy streets, largely unseen, the Iris data show that Cape Town’s wastewater treatment plants pump hundreds of millions of litres of almost untreated sewage into its rivers and oceans each day. This has caused parts of the city world renowned for its natural beauty and the biodiversity of its flora, to literally stink.



Estuaries that are crucial fish nurseries have been ecologically devastated. The City’s own water-quality report states almost half its river systems are so polluted that canoeing on them would be a health hazard.

One of Cape Town’s most polluted water bodies is the Diep River estuary, which receives up to 47 million litres of effluent from the Potsdam plant per day. Lack of proper wastewater treatment has hit the environment so hard that the Environmental Management Inspectorate last year issued the City with an order to clean it up – failure to do so carried criminal charges. Drinking water supply is also compromised.

Recreational water bodies are periodically closed to the public due to sewage spills, and the City pumps about 40 million litres of essentially raw sewage and industrial wastewater directly into the ocean every day from three marine outfalls. The only treatment this wastewater receives is that it goes through a 3mm sieve to remove solids such as plastics and grit.

Scientists from local universities have studied how this wastewater, which includes pollutants from the light industry, as well as antibiotics and pharmaceutical compounds from hospitals such as the Christiaan Barnard Memorial Hospital in the central city, is affecting the marine ecosystem, including accumulating in molluscs and seaweed.

The economic, health and environmental impact of sewage pollution, says Barnes, who was one of the authors of this and other studies, is “grossly, grossly underrated”.

Meanwhile, millions of South Africans live with the daily reality of contaminated water. Some have given up hope of the situation ever improving.

“We have accepted the conditions of living here since we do not know who is going to rescue us,” says Samka outside her home in Butterworth’s temporary settlement.

“We have made peace with these conditions.” DM168

Sidebar: Calculating the wastewater data

The Iris dashboard is a development of the national department’s Green Drop programme initiated in 2007 as an auditing tool to assess wastewater treatment across the country.

There are three indicators of effluent quality contained in the data: microbiological, chemical, physical.

The Green Drop reports provide a weighted score for wastewater treatment works (WWTWs) based on these and other factors, but as these weightings were not available to use, we adopted a simple indicator which corresponds to the Iris dashboard legend, to determine whether WWTWs were failing to adequately treat wastewater.

Failing WWTWs: <50% for all three indicators, including no monitoring data submitted.

Poor compliance: <50% on at least one effluent-quality indicator.

Mixed compliance: 50% – 75% on the least compliant effluent-quality indicator.

Acceptable compliance: >75% on the least compliant effluent-quality indicator.

Excellent compliance: >99% compliance on all three effluent-quality indicators.

This investigation was produced in collaboration with the Center for Collaborative Investigative Journalism and Code for All, with the support of the National Endowment for Democracy.

Video by Peter Luhanga and Nombulelo Damba.

Visualisations and additional research by Nompumelelo Mtsweni.

[Lisbeth]

It is even worth than I thought and also dangerous

[Richprins]

It is such a tragedy, and unnecessary as it is due to corruption and misgovernment!

[Lisbeth]

I have the impression that the various municipal employees, at all levels, are not very efficient nor interested and the ones at a higher level are more interested in politics (personalized) than governing the country.

[Lisbeth]

Rivers of sewage: Solving South Africa’s wastewater treatment problem

By Sandisiwe Shoba• 12 May 2021


Leaking sewage flows through the streets of Sebokeng Zone 17 on 14 January 2021 in Sebokeng, Gauteng. (Photo: Gallo images / Fani Mahuntsi)

Two weeks ago, DM168 published an investigation looking into the dismal state of SA’s sewage treatment works. Struck by the report’s findings, we asked you, the reader, to suggest solutions. Here’s what you had to say:

(Read the original first article above)

Solving South Africa’s wastewater treatment problem is no easy feat. As we now know, more than half of the country’s treatment plants are in “poor or critical condition” and 75% of 910 municipality-run wastewater treatment works achieved less than 50% compliance with minimum effluent standards in 2020.

The failure of wastewater treatment plants is harming our environment and health on an unprecedented scale, as billions of litres of raw and poorly treated sewage enter our rivers and oceans daily. But how do we go about tackling the problem?

Outsourcing

“At heart this is a systemic failure caused by putting the wrong people in charge,” says Professor Neil Armitage, the deputy director of Future Water at the University of Cape Town.

The only fix, in Armitage’s view, is replacing those currently in power with “people who know what they are doing and are empowered to do it”.

For Rob Dyer, who has spent more than 10 years working as an engineer for eThekwini Water & Sanitation, the only “realistic option” for improving water and sanitation services is outsourcing.

“The Municipal Structures Act allows for municipalities to outsource water services. This can be used to set up a competent parastatal water services organisation, with capable staff and free of the pseudo-managerialism that pervades government at present,” says Dyer.

The director of Logical Waste, Jason Gifford, agrees. “We should privatise the operation and maintenance of the wastewater sector wholesale,” he says.

“The private sector partner takes on the financial and technical risk of the project but the municipality retains the ownership of the asset.”

Gifford is an engineer with more than 10 years of experience in the South African water and wastewater sector.

He says the government fails to keep itself accountable but would leap at the opportunity to sue a private entity for mismanagement.

Claude Visagie, a mechanical engineer with 14 years of experience in the sewage and water treatment industry, points out that procurement processes for jobs such as maintenance are often price-driven, therefore “the cheapest person wins”, though they may lack the necessary skills.

In response to this proposed solution, the spokesperson for the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS), Sputnik Ratau, says outsourcing is the responsibility of each Water Services Authority (WSA).

“Section 19 of the Water Services Act provides for a WSA to get into [a] contract with the private sector as a Water Services Provider.”

According to Gifford, in some municipalities, like the City of Cape Town, outsourcing is already at play in wastewater treatment. Yet, Visagie says, sharing responsibilities with the private sector requires political will from the government and is a “long process” that won’t necessarily “work in all municipalities”.


Members of the South African National Defence Force show the progress made at the Vaal River water purification plant in 2019. (Photo: Gallo Images / Netwerk24 / Deaan Vivier)

Maintaining and providing security for infrastructure

As our investigation pointed out, the failure of sewage treatment plants is tied heavily to poor infrastructure maintenance.

According to Gifford, theft and a lack of security are partly to blame. “It’s catastrophic! I can take you to any number of works … and the pumps, the motors, the cables, the control box, have all been stripped. All that’s left is a piece of concrete.”

Gifford says this requires urgent intervention, because theft and damage mean municipalities are “haemorrhaging money” dealing with the issue.

“Pumps, for example, are expensive. Depending on the volume of water, you have a R300,000 to R500,000 pump standing there that is an integral part of the entire process.”

The department said it was “entirely the responsibility of the respective municipalities to safeguard and secure assets”.


The SANDF had made considerable progress in 2019, but it was unable to rebuild the collapsed wastewater system until government funds had been released. (Photo: Gallo Images / Netwerk24 / Deaan Vivier)

Natural solutions

For Kyle Odgers, the pollution problem is further upstream, at “the source of the waste”. Odgers is an entrepreneur and director of KleenHealth, which offers water remediation solutions.

The company uses probiotics to unclog drains. It breaks down solid fats into liquids and helps neutralise odours. “The most important thing is that we are not using something that is toxic or something that is harmful,” says Odgers. The probiotics contain strains of bacillus bacteria.

He points out that common drain cleaners are harmful to water down the line. By breaking down waste at the source in a “natural way”, problems such as burst manholes can be avoided. Odgers says this is a larger issue than failing wastewater treatment works, because untreated sewage spills out onto the streets.

To prove the efficacy of his product, Odgers cited a 2020 study conducted by the University of the Witwatersrand’s School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies. A treatment process called bioremediation was used to improve the odour of toilets in two Gauteng schools: one with a pit latrine and the other a flush system.

The bioremediation treatment consists of a nontoxic bacterium that digests faecal matter; a universal deodorant spray that breaks down ammonia and any bacteria that convert urea to ammonia; and a solution designed to reduce solid fat – which blocks the pipes – to liquid, which can then be flushed away.

Through a series of smell tests, participants in the study were required to rate the odour of the toilets before and after treatment. At both schools, all participants reported a marked improvement in odour.

According to Gifford and Visagie, substances such as chlorine, which are often used to disinfect effluent before it is discharged, have shortcomings. As our investigation pointed out, “wastewater inadequately treated with chemicals such as chlorine kills only the weaker micro-organisms”.

Chlorine leaks can also pose a threat.

Gifford says an alternative to chlorine is the use of ultraviolet light. But first SA needs to employ “tertiary filtration” in its treatment process. Tertiary filtration, he explains, is using some form of media to remove solids from the water. “Secondary filtration” is typically done before the water is disinfected. He suggests adding another filtration step.

“After you settle the solids out by gravity, typically you still have between 30mg and 50mg per litre of solids. Those discharge levels, albeit much better than the majority of the works currently, are not high enough. They are not at a sufficient standard to ensure our rivers remain healthy.”

Tertiary filtration would reduce the solid load to below 5mg to 10mg/litre, which he says would allow for the use of ultraviolet light to disinfect the water.

“You spend so much time and effort cleaning wastewater just to pump a whole lot of salts to put back into the environment. It doesn’t make sense.”

DWS says the Water Use Licence does not prevent WSAs from applying other disinfectant technologies (such as UV light). “However, these must be stated in the application for water use authorisation and the department will consider those on [an] individual basis,” says Ratau.

But according to Visagie and Odgers, we can’t just blame everything on the government.

“We are the problem. It’s not DWS only,” says Odgers, who feels the public needs to undergo behaviour change in terms of how we view wastewater.

“Your toilet is not a dustbin.”

Visagie agrees that people need to be informed about what they can and cannot dispose of in the sewage works, because what enters at the source will most likely end up in our oceans and potentially in our drinking water. DM168