Stink raised over ‘illicit’ disposal of effluent

CONSERVATION lobby group ReThinkTheStink says it has caught the City red-handed disposing of waste water effluent into Tableview Nature Reserve and Diep River through what it says is an illegal discharge point.

A video posted by the group – recorded on May 3 – shows an open sluice gate at the Potsdam Wastewater Treatment Plant allowing effluent into the Diep River/Table Bay Nature Reserv e.

ReThinkTheStink member Peter Walsh said it occurred while the City and Potsdam treatment plant were under a directive, and this, he said, showed the City didn’t feel threatened.

“They could be releasing treated or untreated sewage. But NEMA doesn’t allow for the unlawful discharge of untreated wastewater into a nature reserve, never mind via an illegal discharge point. Disposal has to be via legal official discharge points.

“What they did is illegal. One should ask why? We have proof that they continuously discharge illegally outside the bounds of their water use licence, otherwise we wouldn’t have pollution in the lagoon,” he said.

Walsh said the City was constantly laying blame at the door of Dunoon and Joe Slovo for something it was ultimately responsible for. “It’s therefore hypocrisy and targeted harassment by Xanthea Limberg of these under-resourced areas when your own WWTW is discharging hundreds of thousands of litres of contaminated water into a nature reserve. The sewage from Joe Slovo and Dunoon pales into comparison when compared to the systemic discharge of waste water from illegal discharge points,” he said.

The Greater TableView Action Forum Planning (GTAF) and Biodiversity head David Ayres said the City cannot be trusted to protect the environment and service delivery. Opening of the sluice gates was a typical action from a City that knows that the Potsdam Wastewater Plant exceeded its design capacity but continued to allow and promote a densification policy that allowed thousands of new dwellings in the Tableview area.

“GTAF calls for a ban on new developments until the City can prove it has installed adequate infrastructure to cope with the development plans.”

The City’s Mayco member for water and waste, Limberg, said preliminary investigations found process controllers had no other choice but to open the valves/sluice gates at Long Pond due to the impacts of the current pond cleaning to prevent the pond walls from collapsing and potentially causing significant pollution. “When staff opened the sluice gates at Long Pond – there’s no other outlet – chlorine disinfection chips were used to minimise E coli in the river despite the discharge only comprising treated effluent.”

It was also not an unofficial discharge point, but the plant’s official discharge point as noted in its water use licence.