A share of more than 10 000 metres of sewer pipes were replaced across Cape Town’s Northern Suburbs in March, bringing long-awaited relief to communities in Bloekombos, Belmont Park, Scottsdene and Wallacedene, areas where raw sewage has flowed through streets and contaminated rivers for years.
Totalling the 10 022 metres, other areas included were Parow, Durbanville and Welgemoed in Bellville. The work forms part of a citywide programme that saw nearly 193 km of ageing water and sewer pipes renewed in the past financial year.
But for many residents in areas such as Wallacedene and Joostenbergvlakte who have lived with the stench and health risks of collapsing infrastructure since 2017, the question remains whether it is enough to defuse what one City health official once called a public health time bomb.
The City’s annual pipe replacement programme forms part of a long-term strategy to renew ageing infrastructure before failures occur, reducing water losses, preventing sewer overflows and strengthening the resilience of water and sanitation networks, according to the City’s Mayco member for water and sanitation, Zahid Badroodien.
In a statement to the media, he said projects are prioritised according to technical criteria including the age and material of pipes, historical failure trends and operational risk, ensuring the areas of greatest need are addressed first.
“Cape Town’s infrastructure must keep pace with population growth, ageing networks and the rising demands of a changing climate,” he says.
“Our ambition is not simply to respond faster when pipes fail. It is to renew more of the network before failures occur, reduce water losses and sewer overflows and provide every community with a more reliable and resilient service. We have made significant progress, but there is still much more to do, and we intend to build on this momentum in the year ahead.”
Public health time bomb
The sewage crisis in Wallacedene peaked in 2024, when at a Subcouncil 2 meeting Dr Andile Zimba from the City of Cape Town’s health department warned of a “public health time bomb”.
According to Zimba, public health is at the centre of the ongoing sewage spills in Wallacedene that pollute large parts of the city via three contaminated rivers. He warned of the outbreak of diseases such as cholera, typhoid fever and gastroenteritis.
“Raw sewage is not supposed to run into (retention) ponds or water streams,” he told a chamber brimming with City officials of all the relevant City departments. In the hot seat were Mayor of Cape Town Geordin Hill-Lewis and City manager Lungelo Mbandazayo who reported back on a short-term service delivery plan developed to tackle the stinky affair.
This followed an urgent plea made to the mayor and city manager by previous Subcouncil 2 chair Marian Nieuwoudt in March 2024 reminding them of their mutual legislative accountability for service delivery failures.
Slum in the making
Calling the area a “slum” Nieuwoudt said the pollution has become untenable and constituted an infrastructure and service delivery failure. The main source of sewage spills originates around the Covid Squatter camps where some 9 400 shacks sprang up next to the formal township of Bloekombos in a land grab during the pandemic.
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Existing infrastructure collapsed under the pressure of the population explosion in the midst of ongoing illegal dumping into the stormwater and sewer systems. Streams of raw sewage in the streets where many young children play is a common sight, while contaminated retention ponds spill over into the city canals and rivers that bear the brunt of it.
To the north-west, sewage flows from the canals into Mosselbank River through the suburb of Kraaifontein, past Durbanville and downstream into Milnerton lagoon and the ocean; and to the south-east, it flows from the Botfontein canal into Bottelary River at the back of Brackenfell into Kuils River downstream to Macassar and into the ocean, polluting agricultural and residential areas along the way.
TygerBurger previously reported that instances of sewage pollution were reported by downstream landowners resulting in National Environmental Management Act (Nema) notices being issued. At the time the newspaper was informed by a reliable source that millions were allegedly spent on implementing a turnaround service plan for the area back in 2021, a plan that was abruptly halted.
TygerBurger could not confirm the exact amount from the City, who in response to a media inquiry stated that “they had no answers”.
Sewage contamination was reported as early as 2017 by residents of Joostenbergvlakte, a rural area adjacent to Bloekombos. Residents first became aware of the stench in September 2017 coming from the stormwater canal running along Joostenbergvlakte on the N1 on the other side of Bloekombos.
The sewage contamination was confirmed when residents took water samples from the canal and retention dam for tests at ARC Elsenberg Research Laboratory. Tests indicated the E.coli count in the water samples to be 3 000 times over the legal limit at a toxic level.
