Africa, Development & Aid, Environment, Headlines, Health, Poverty & SDGs, The Southern Africa Water Wire, Water & Sanitation

DEVELOPMENT-SOUTH AFRICA: Power Cuts Lead to Sewage Spills

Steven Lang

JOHANNESBURG, Oct 28 2007 (IPS) - Sewage plants in South Africa’s northern Gauteng Province poured millions of litres of untreated waste into three rivers between the capital, Pretoria, and the commercial centre of Johannesburg earlier this month. National power utility Eskom cut electricity to the treatment plants, which were then unable to process the waste water before it was released into the rivers.

Eskom cut the electricity as part of a national programme aimed at helping it cope with excessive demand for power. In recent months, the utility has systematically turned off electricity to large parts of the country because it has been unable to meet the demand for power.

An engineer employed by the city of Pretoria told IPS that over a two-day period, the Rooiwal, Seekoeigat, Baviaanspoort, Soshanguve, Klipgat, Rietgat, Sandspruit and Sutherland Ridge sewage treatment plants fed about two hundred million litres of untreated waste into the rivers.

The Apies, Hennops and Pienaars Rivers eventually flow into the Hartebeespoort Dam, a popular recreational area within easy driving distance of both Johannesburg and Pretoria.

The engineer said he was aware that Eskom was implementing cuts, but that he was given no official notification when the sewage plants would be targeted: “They (Eskom) have to make exceptions for us. When they do load-sharing they need to do it in other places, but not in the sewage treatment plants.”

Water bearing raw waste streams into the sewage plants and is treated without stopping its flow into nearby rivers. “There is no tap that you can close,” explained the engineer.


Some chemicals are used in the treatment process; but most viruses and tapeworm eggs are eliminated by pumping oxygen into the water – hence the importance of maintaining electricity to plants. The oxygen allows air-breathing bacteria to break down organic waste products.

Eskom apologised for the power interruptions, but said they were necessary because unseasonable cold and rainy weather had caused coal supplies to become wet and increased demand for power just as the utility was embarking on summer maintenance.

Speaking on a national radio station, the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry’s Themba Khumalo attempted to downplay the gravity of the spillage: “It is a catastrophe, but certainly not a national crisis.”

He went on to place the responsibility for averting similar crises on the shoulders of individual municipalities, saying they should negotiate directly with Eskom and tell the power utility which sanitation works should not be included in power cuts.

The spillages into the Apies, Hennops and Pienaars Rivers could have serious consequences for people who have direct contact with the water. Residents of informal settlements along the river banks who normally draw water from the rivers could contract diseases. Spillages may also affect those who use the rivers for recreational purposes.

However, most residents of Gauteng Province consume water provided by Rand Water, the country’s largest water utility, which draws its supplies from the Vaal Dam.

“From a drinking water quality perspective we obviously are in a rather fortunate position that this latest incident hasn’t affected our water supplies,” said Karl Lubout, a water quality specialist at Rand Water.

He said that the main problem with raw sewage is its high micro-biological load, which may carry any number of waterborne diseases such as cholera directly into the river system.

Lubout did point out that the recent spillages might not be as serious as they were initially portrayed. “Fortunately, with micro-biological pollution you get a relatively rapid die-off rate, so from that point of view the water quality will improve as it moves downstream…If you look at the difference between chemical and micro-biological pollution, micro-biological pollution is easier to solve.”

He said it could take up to three weeks for the health of river systems to improve.

The widely publicised sewage spills into the three rivers are only the most recent in a long series of incidents that have contributed to serious degradation of water quality in the region.

‘Kormorant’, an online newspaper serving the Hartebeespoort Dam area, has carried several reports in the last year about sewage spills resulting from broken pumps and stolen equipment. (“Kormorant” is the Afrikaans word for cormorant, a water bird.)

It has also carried reports on two cases, one in August and one in September, where residents instituted legal action against the local municipality for allowing untreated effluent to flow into the dam.

 
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