Sewage flow into Nahoon River due to illegal electricity connections

Thousands of litres of raw sewage has been flowing into the Nahoon River for years and according to ward 18 councillor Jason McDowell, it can be traced back to a dysfunctional sewage pump station in the Cambridge village settlement.

There are two pump stations in Cambridge village, which comprises informal and formal homes. These pump stations jointly manage sewage flows from formal households only, BCM spokesperson Samkelo Ngwenya said.

Sewage from the pump stations is meant to be pumped from the area to join a sewage line from Highgate, before gravitating to a sewer pipeline towards the East Bank wastewater treatment plant.

Instead, sewage is flowing freely into the Nahoon River, which runs alongside the location and through the suburbs of Dorchester Heights, Abbotsford and Nahoon towards the sea.

McDowell said this was due to illegal electricity connections causing one of the pumps to stop working and its sump (the low space that collects often undesirable liquids) to overflow regularly.

McDowell said: “One of the biggest problems is this pump station. It is not secure enough and the electricity supply is consistently interrupted because of

“The pump stops working when there is no power supply and it starts to overflow in order to prevent it from blowing as it was designed to do.

“This overflow of raw sewage then runs down the valley directly into the Nahoon River.

“It’s been affecting my ward for years, but it’s also affecting the people who live near the pump station very badly.” illegal electricity connections that blow the transformer.

Ngwenya confirmed that illegal electricity connections had caused issues with both the pump stations in the area.

He said the municipality had, however, provided security to one of the pump stations and it had not been vandalised in the last six months.

“The other pump station receives electricity from the residential transformer 150m away from the station itself.

“Illegal electricity connections are continuously made on the line to the pump station, resulting in pumps tripping.

“This happens weekly. The municipality arranges for disconnections on an ongoing basis; however, this issue is more a criminal and socioeconomic reflection of the communities where these pump stations are than a maintenance problem,” said Ngwenya.

When the Dispatch visited the site of the first pump station last week, it was apparently working as there was no overflow from the pump’s sump, but still, sewage water could be seen cascading down towards the river from the pump station’s main pipe.

Resident Malisa Buzani said a manhole behind her house had been overflowing for more than a week and it also overflowed at the pump station regularly. “At one stage the sewage was flowing for longer than a year before they came to fix it,” she said.

The Dispatch also visited the second pump station and found it to be secured with electric fencing, yet a slow trickle of sewage could be seen spilling out of its main pipe.

Ngwenya said the metro had considered solar panels, but 95% of the city’s pumps worked on three-phase electricity, which could not be provided via solar energy.

“The municipality considered installing single-phase pumps but these are only available overseas and there is no aftersales support locally,” he said.