The Milnerton Aquatic Club (Mac) has hit back at the City of Cape Town saying that to date the City has not kept to the responsibility of cleaning the result of the past pollution spills at Rietvlei waterbody.
This after the City issued a notice to caution the public of a potentially highly toxic blue-green algal bloom at Rietvlei waterbody last week.
READ | Water conditions at Rievlei waterbody monitored due to algal-bloom found
Mac’s commodore Brian Webb told TygerBurger the City has also not kept up to its responsibility of implementing any sort of rehabilitation programme to reduce the nutrients or harvesting the excessive weed growth.
“This has been left to the Milnerton Aquatic Club with its limited resources to keep the weed growth off its banks and waterways by pulling weeds out by hand,” Webb says.
A build-up
Webb says the build-up of nutrients in Rietvlei is a direct result of pollution-related incidents over the past few years.
This was highlighted in June 2020 when a large spill occurred – high levels of e.Coli were recorded resulting in the closure of the vlei to all water activities.
This was due to the ingress of sewage water into the storm water system, leaks, failed equipment, load shedding, and a total lack of the City’s engagement and accountability, TygerBurger previously reported.
“It is an economic reality that the semigration to the Peninsula has created a huge demand on the supply of accommodation, whether it be building of new houses or demolishing single residential dwellings and converting them to multiple units; this has put enormous pressure on our already aged infrastructure,” Webb says.
Failure
Webb adds that the City’s failure to upgrade and to meet the demand for the sewerage disposal service has led to the pollution of Rietvlei as well as the Milnerton Lagoon.
Furthermore, the City plans to allow in future private property developers to set up and maintain their own sewage package plants on site and to release their “treated” effluent into the storm water system, i.e. Rietvlei Nature Reserve. Mac heavily objects to this. If the City is incapable of managing their own pump stations and leaks, how are they going to manage third-party water quality and compliance?
Eddie Andrews, the City’s deputy mayor and Mayco member for spatial planning and environment, told TygerBurger the scheduled routine sampling was done on Monday 20 February.
“This would normally exclude algal analysis, but we have requested that the routine samples also include hydro samples this time,” he says.
Water sport athletes are concerned for their health and safety after hearing about the potential pollution which is still found in the vlei. They have since demanded that the City fixes the “mess”.
