The beaches on the Atlantic seaboard have Blue Flag status, but it’s validity is questioned by locals.
The deputy chair of the mayoral advisory committee on water quality in wetlands and waterways, Alex Lansdowne, told a city council meeting last week that the City's beaches had seen uninterrupted Blue Flag status throughout the holidays and that no recreational water bodies had been closed due to pollution in the past 365 days, but environmentalists and the Atlantic Sun’s reporting on this issue paint a murkier picture.
Mr Lansdowne did not respond to questions from the Atlantic Sun about his statements, but our reports on several pollution occurrences in the past year would seem to challenge his interpretation: “Camps Bay spill toxic to marine life, says scientist,” July 20, 2023; “Chronic pollution at Three Anchor Bay – report,” October 12, 2023; and Camps Bay Blue Flag lowered and raised again 24 hours later, January 18, 2024.
Dr Cleeve Robertson, CEO of the National Sea Rescue Institute, said the municipality appeared to be in denial about water pollution.
“I think we just need acknowledgement that we have a problem, but in election season, there seems to be a kind of fuzzy ludicrous denial of a very serious issue in Cape Town.
“Sewage is running directly into our rivers, estuaries and waterways, all flowing to the sea, compounded by marine sewage outfalls. We are poisoning the environment we live in, and the strategic political leadership of the province and City need to stop cheap politics and citizen ghosting and divert funds from pet projects to essential infrastructure."
Last Friday, the City held its first advisory forum meeting on marine outfall plants, and according to Professor Leslie Petrik, group leader of environmental and nano sciences at UWC, it fell short of adequately grappling with the pollution problem.
“In a three-hour meeting, the City hogged the floor. Flawed data and arguments by the City were not adequately dissected by the wetlands panel, and input from the public not adequately scheduled."
She said the meeting seemed to have been a "tick box exercise" by the City to project the impression to Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment Minister Barbara Creecy that "all was hunky dory with the outfalls, and that we all agreed today that the City is doing a great job. We don't".
Professor Petrik said the City did not see the marine outfall plants as a priority as it believed they were meeting their design criteria.
“Their arguments are based on modeling of plume dispersion 'in an instant in time', which is laughable given that the marine outfalls discharge raw sewage 24-7 and 356 days a year ad infinitum, and that impact zones are much greater than their flawed models indicate.
“No budget is allocated by the City in the foreseeable future to adequately treat the marine outfall sewage prior to discharge or divert it to treatment plants."
Professor Petrik said real-time data would be a great advancement for public health and safety as raw sewage disposal into the marine environment would not stop any time soon.
“The City is commissioning yet another very expensive study to prove the outfalls are 'meeting their design criteria'. Certainly the service provider will get rich from doing the study, but this just delays the necessary decision-making for another 10 or 20 years while the marine biota is continuously exposed to the toxic and slow violence of drowning in our excrement.”
Ward 54 councillor Nicola Jowell said there had been fewer than ten members of the public at the meeting, which will be held quarterly.
“The external consultants who are appointed in terms of the environmental monitoring also provided a lengthy presentation on the monitoring plan for the outfalls. The presentations provided a comprehensive and detailed picture of the current position and I think would be extremely informative for any member of the public to enable a better understanding of the situation. The forum meetings are open to the public and there was a widespread invitation for people to attend this last meeting and this will be the case for future meetings too.”
Mr Lansdowne said that R140 million in upgrades to the marine outfalls was budgeted for 2025/2026.
“These are short-term measures that were advised by an expert consulting team and reviewed by the committee. Longer term measures are currently being evaluated, all of which cost in the order of magnitude of billions of rands,” he said.