City answers questions on Camps Bay wastewater network
Mark Jackson, Tamboerskloof
Camps Bay's Blue Flag beachfront, with a sewage drain blocked yet again, and sewage flowing onto our beach.
This excuse may on the surface hold some truth, but we believe the root cause is sewage infrastructure that is grossly over-strained by a lack of capacity.
Our City officials have allowed a lot of new development on the beachfront, but how many decades have it been since sewerage pipes were upgraded?
We believe this is the result.
And if the City of Cape Town can’t get something as simple as this right – making sure our sewage infrastructure’s capacity meets the “demand” – if they can’t even get that right, then how can we possibly trust City officials with something as complex as their new water “reuse” programme (that is the name for their multi-billion rand plan to put treated sewage effluent into our drinking water system.)
• Dr Zahid Badroodien, the City’s mayoral committee member for water and sanitation, responds:
Mr Jackson presents a number of personal opinions in his letter to you which are factually incorrect.
The Water and Sanitation Directorate has undertaken the necessary network analysis and can confirm that the wastewater network in Camps Bay is in a good condition. Further, there are no capacity-related constraints. Every development application is approved or not approved based on a master-planning test for operational capacity.
Our wastewater conveyance team conduct regular CCTV inspections to determine and monitor the condition of the network.
When sewer overflows occur our wastewater conveyance teams respond as quickly as possible to these occurrences. At the time of unblocking it was found that foreign objects are the main cause of these blockages.
There is a worrying trend in which more and more wet-wipes are being found in the system in addition to oil/grease/fats as well as condoms and sanitary pads that have blocked the network. See the photograph attached of the team removing chunks of fat from this sewer pipeline on Thursday July 11.
Our pump stations are operating optimally and are inspected at regular intervals.
Mr Jackson regularly presents his personal opinion as fact on community platforms that are not able to test the information he shares. This is counter-productive to all of the City’s efforts to communicate transparently and truthfully regarding our investments not only in enhancing marine outfall treatment but also our efforts to upgrade, rehabilitate and replace our water and sewer network.