Rescuing Knysna
The department is finalising a diagnostic plan for Knysna, and, concurrent to this, a support plan, which is being compiled with the support of both provincial and national departments.
KNYSNA - The Western Cape government is finalising an emergency plan to solve Knysna Municipality's lack of service delivery, affecting refuse, water and sewerage. This emerged after a meeting between Provincial Minister of Local Government, Environmental Affairs and Development Planning, Anton Bredell, and the Knysna Council on Tuesday 28 November.
Knysna is sinking under the weight of refuse problems (as reported in KPH last week) as well as water, and another, bigger, problem and potential environmental catastrophe - raw sewage flowing into the Knysna Estuary. Bredell had a long meeting with the Knysna Council on Tuesday to resolve capacity challenges that are affecting its finances and basic service delivery.
More seriously, the province's development planning issued a "pre-directive" to the municipality regarding sewage pollution of the estuary. According to Bredell's spokesperson Wouter Kriel, his comment after the meeting was, "The department is finalising a diagnostic plan for Knysna, and, concurrent to this, a support plan, which is being compiled with the support of both provincial and national departments. These two documents will be presented to the Knysna Council next week, and if it is accepted, a broad range of support interventions will be available to help Knysna return to better fortunes."
He said of immediate concern was that water distribution and sewerage has collapsed
"due to the lack of management expertise, lack of maintenance and no investment in basic infrastructure".
Bredell has tasked engineers from his department to formulate an emergency plan by tomorrow, Friday 1 December, to address these challenges.
Added to this was the problem of f refuse collection which had come to a halt and caused a very serious health hazard in the town.
"This problem is currently being addressed with help from neighbouring municipalities. Knysna Municipality needs to