Mark Jackson, Tamboerskloof
Thanks for your article on the City’s plans for treatment plants to tackle all the raw effluent being dumped into our marine parks at Camps Bay, Hout Bay and Green Point (“Sewage plants planned for Green Point, Camps Bay,” Atlantic Sun, June 13). However, serious concerns remain.
At the consulting engineers' presentation to the City on January 31, a plan for Maiden's Cove was presented as the preferred long-term option for Camps Bay. This was for a 10-million-litres-a-day plant that could treat all the contaminants in our effluent, as part of the R6 billion overall cost.
Instead, the City’s press release last week only mentions the smaller "medium term" Camps Bay beachfront option, which only treats five million litres a day, and I'm not sure even tackles all the contaminants.
Beneath Maiden's Cove's huge parking lot seems a far smarter place to position a sewage treatment plant, rather than right on the city's most popular beachfront.
Why isn't the City mentioning the Maiden's Cove option?
Furthermore, according to the consultants, the beachfront medium plant is supposed to be part of a R2 billion to R3 billion option. Why is the City saying it will cost R6 billion?
Also, in the presentation, the consultants suggested urgent upgrades to maintain the status quo of the existing outfalls (who even knew they needed upgrades?) should cost roughly R100 million. The City is now saying this will cost R140million. How did "roughly R100 million" become R140 million?
The existing outfall's capacity is five million litres a day. The City claims it is only using half of that capacity. Yet in their recent permit application, the City applied for, and was granted, a change in capacity to 11.3 million litres a day. When pressed on this, the City claimed this change was the result of "a typo". However, the consultants’ favoured Maiden's Cove treatment plant is indeed for 10 million litres a day. Why would the consultants design a plant this large, if the City’s new enlarged-capacity permit application was "just a typo"? Are City officials lying to us?
The City has promised to implement these treatment plants over 10+ years. However, 10+ plus years is a meaningless number. Is that 15 years? 20 years? If the City were serious about this, they could easily build the plants within five to eight years. Why haven't they given us an implementation date?
The kicker in the City’s press release is that nowhere in the document is expressed any regret or concern that the existing outfalls are a problem and need replacing. All we are told is "they are meeting their design criteria", but there's zero acknowledgement from City officials that those criteria are decades out of date. Indeed, reading that press release, one would wonder why the City is bothering with these proposed treatment plants at all?
It seems most likely to me that despite their charming new spin doctor, our same-old City officials haven't changed their tune and that our City has no real intention of ever building these treatment plants. And those of us who are actually concerned with public health, and the health of our marine life in our national marine park, are (almost) back at square one.
• This letter has been sent to the City for comment. We will publish the response when we get it.