HISTORY OF POOR WATER QUALITY RESULTS IN KENTON

OCUMENTS on water quality results in Ndlambe provided to Talk of the Town reveal a history of recent bad results for Ekuphumleni as well as the Kenton CBD.

This follows our story last week which revealed high faecal coliform and e.coli counts in tap water samples taken in Ekuphumleni in early February.

The samples were taken by the municipality and submitted to the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Municipality’s infrastructure and engineering unit for bacteriological analysis. The results were not publicly revealed by the municipality but leaked to community leaders who provided TotT with copies.

The municipality explained the test result as a “failure” at the sampling point and said re-tests a week later showed the water was compliant with prescribed standards – meaning a zero count for both faecal coliforms and e.coli.

The results for treated water from the Bathurst reservoir were even worse than Ekuphumleni, but no explanation was offered for this.

Ekuphumleni community activist Zache Ngxingo subsequently provided copies of two other certificates of analysis to TotT.

DIn February last year, water samples taken in Ekuphumleni and the Kenton CBD showed a faecal coliform count of 15cfu/100ml and an e.coli count of 15cfu/100ml for the Kenton CBD, and a count of 10cfu/100ml for both in Ekuphumleni. Lesser counts of faecal coliforms only were measured in Klipfontein, Marselle and Thornhill.

The results for the Kenton CBD and Ekuphumleni were even worse when samples were taken in August last year, when results for the Kenton CBD revealed a count of 28cfu/100ml for both faecal coliforms and e.coli, and samples in Ekuphumleni showed 40cfu/100ml of faecal coliforms and 39cfu/100ml of e.coli.

That time, Endlovini also failed the test, measuring 11cfu/100ml of faecal coliforms and 6cfu/100ml of e.coli.

Nolukhanyo and Thornhill also failed the test for the presence of faecal coliforms in the tap water.

TotT asked municipal spokesman Cecil Mbolekwa to explain how the water became polluted, why the community was not warned to take precautions like boiling the water before use, and what was done to rectify the problem.

He had not responded by the time of going to press.