Durban — A team from the eThekwini Executive Committee laid bare the state of municipal sewage pump stations that are causing pollution and upsetting residents.
On Friday, eThekwini Mayor Mxolisi Kaunda embarked on an oversight visit to sewage pump stations and wastewater treatment plants in the south and west of Durban to assess their functionality and the progress the City is making repairing the sewage infrastructure that was damaged during the recent floods.
However, Kaunda did not visit the pump station that was not flood damaged on Ernest Bower Place on the Bluff. In this suburb residents enter day 27 on Monday since a municipal sewer and manhole, within a servitude traversing many properties on one side of the street in the Treasure Beach zone, were blocked.
The manhole overflowed and caused a backup and clogging of the main sewer, resulting in sewage overflowing from manholes on at least 12 properties. This was first reported on Monday, July 25.
Bluff resident Bertram Smith also complained that sewage in Stableford Road was leaking out of a manhole, and it stunk.
Councillor Thabani Mthethwa, the DA eThekwini Caucus leader, said they would be calling for an emergency meeting to table various concerns regarding sewage spills across the municipality.
Mthethwa said a two-day oversight inspection to assess the extent of the severe sewage spills found that they were tantamount to environmental crimes, human rights violations and ecological disasters.
“Large parts of the city have been subjected to hundreds of thousands of litres of sewage pouring within meters from people’s homes, into rivers and the ocean, for months, some for years,” Mthethwa said.
He added that the City had not acted or displayed any sense of urgency in trying to remedy the series of very serious human rights and environmental contraventions.
Mthethwa said that even with the new budget cycle, there was no tangible work in progress to prioritise or fast track even the critical sites. He felt the City was dragging its feet in repairing and upgrading critical infrastructure.
Mthethwa called it “the death knell for the biodiversity and ecology of our riverine systems and beaches”.
In previous media reports, eThekwini's water unit declared that it needed at least R128 billion to fix the water and sanitation issues.
“It was very evident that the majority of spills were due to failed pump stations and main trunk pipeline breaches that simply could not cope with densification and expansion in the city. The lack of preventive maintenance and the floods were the final straw,” Mthethwa said.
Daily News