FUNDING ALLOCATED BUT NO ACTION
THE strong smell of disinfect permeates Nnini Morosi’s neat, two-bedroom flat.
But beneath the air fresheners, sanitisers and bleach, the sickening stench of sewage still lingers.
“The kitchen is the worst,” says the mother of two, her face twisting in disgust. “It’s horrible to cook in here. Even the tap water smells like sewage.”
Morosi has lived comfortably in her block of flats in a downtrodden part of mid-town Vereeniging for the past decade.
But regular sewage spillages in the past two months have made her family’s life intolerable. Across Emfuleni, where a sewage crisis has festered for nearly 20 years, collapsing wastewater networks have caused sewage to seep through the ground into the basements of buildings, like Morosi’s.
Outside her flat, and her neighbours’, a mess of putrefying waste clogs drains. Sewage streams across the parking area.
“I can’t open my doors or my windows because of the smell. We have to buy bottled water, or boil our water. It’s tough, so tough.”
At a neighbouring flat block, Willem Potgieter* dodges the noxious pools of sewage filling the street to show how sewage is oozing into his basement. He has done what he can to try to divert it, but it seems futile.
“The sewage is coming up everywhere. It’s a disaster. That smell is in our clothes when we go to work.
“We haven’t been able to open our windows for two months.”
Local residents say Emfuleni’s crumbling, “antiquated” wastewater network – the 2600km of pipes transporting sewage to Emfuleni’s three ailing wastewater treatment works, is in its worst-ever state.
Sewage is being spilled at a “record level” all the way from Evaton down to the multimillion-rand homes on the banks of the polluted Vaal River.
“The situation is even now more dire than it has ever been in the history of Emfuleni local municipality,” remarks Rosemary Anderson, a spokesperson for waste and sanitation for the business chamber in the Vaal.
“The consequence is that there are major spillages in townships, suburbs, CBD’S, schools, clinics, council buildings, apartment blocks and roads – everywhere.
“No township, suburb or business is immune to this pollution,” she says.
The larger ramifications are that the sewage is not even getting to the waste water plants to be processed and treated because of breakdowns and blockages in the sewer network.
“This raw sewage is eventually entering the tributaries and the Vaal River.” In March, the Sedibeng District Municipality had to temporarily close its rates office because of a “necessary containment of sewer overflow”.
In October last year, Finance Minister Tito Mboweni, gave the SANDF the mandate to facilitate the rehabilitation of the Vaal River system, a major water source feeding Gauteng’s economy, specifically focused on the dysfunctional wastewater treatment plants and 44 pump stations.
But the SANDF’S work, too, has largely stalled because it is yet to receive its R1 billion budget.
“They are doing a fine job, even without the adequate funds and equipment they are burdened by. So far they have removed 21 tons of hardened sludge from the primary settling tanks at the Sebokeng wastewater plant, and secured pump stations that were routinely vandalised,” says Anderson.
The Department of Water and Sanitation and Treasury urgently need to allocate funds “so that the Vaal Army can continue with their mandate and Metsi a Lekoa be funded as they need to be funded to provide adequate water and sanitation to the residents of the Vaal”.
Metsi a Lekoa is the entity within Emfuleni that manages water and sanitation, but it’s “totally hamstrung by a grossly inadequate budget, vehicles, tools and human resources”.
Emfuleni should be declared a disaster area so disaster funds can be accessed quickly, she believes.
Adele Andrews, a member of environmental lobby group, Save the Vaal (Save), sits in her garden overlooking the black, sewage sludge-filled Rietspruit. The stench is unbearable.
“Here, the Rietspruit is only about 900m-deep. I’d say 800m is sewage sitting at the bottom. This last year has been horrific. Everything has literally shut down and all the sewage is coming straight down to the Vaal.
“When the Army came in, they started off doing a brilliant job but then they had no funds. What happened, Tito Mboweni?” she wonders.
Save says about 140 to 200 million litres of raw sewage flows into the Vaal River daily from Emfuleni’s sanitation system. In Loch Vaal, near the mouth of the Rietspruit, blue-green algae has now appeared.
“Although not normally toxic, blue-green algae (cyanobacteria) becomes toxic when the nutrient load exceeds certain levels in the water.
“It’s inevitable, fish are going to THE repair, refurbishment and expansion of capacity of sewage reticulation and treatment systems in the Sedibeng region is being funded through several government programmes, says National Treasury.
“An intergovernmental agreement has been signed between Emfuleni local municipality, Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS), SANDF, Municipal Infrastructure Support Agent and the East Rand Water Care Company, setting out the different responsibilities of each stakeholder.
“In 2018/19, the DWS reallocated R241 million within the Regional
Bulk Infrastructure Grant to spend on the repair and refurbishment of bulk sanitation infrastructure in the Sedibeng region.”
Over the 2019 Medium Term Expenditure Framework, further amounts of R342.5m in 2019/20, R520m in 2020/21 and R370m in 2021/22 are allocated in the Regional Bulk Infrastructure Grant for wastewater treatment works and pump station projects in the region.
“The municipality is also allocated Municipal Infrastructure Grant allocations of R169 million in 2019/20, R178.9m in 2020/21 and R193.1m in 2021/22, that they have been requested to prioritise towards sanitation projects.
“National Treasury will continue to engage all the relevant stakeholders regarding the costing and funding of the intervention.” DWS did not respond to the Saturday Star.
Maureen Stewart, of Save, says: “The R241 million was promised to the SANDF and they haven’t received that yet. Certainly the Emfuleni municipality is doing nothing. We are still waiting for the recommissioning of Module 3 (one of three working modules) at the Sebokeng Waste Water Treatment Plant, which is supposedly happening this week. However, that module being operational alone is only slightly going to alleviate the shocking sewage pollution of the Rietspruit.” | Sheree Bega die and bird life will be affected,” says Andrews.
“The communities down the Vaal Barrage are affected as well, Parys and beyond. Farmers can’t irrigate. In Vanderbijlpark and Vereeniging, the network has collapsed. It’s a catastrophe.”
On Thursday, the SA Human Rights Commission (SAHRC), which has conducted an inquiry into the contamination of the Vaal River, inspected the Sebokeng and Rietspruit sewage works.
“There is ongoing pollution and ongoing sewer spillages,” says SAHRC Buang Jones, the provincial manager.
“The changes are minimal. Progress is slow. We are disappointed that since the military intervention, there hasn’t been significant improvement.
“The military had to use its own budget to fund the remediation work at Sebokeng.
“This is despite the announcement that R1bn was set aside to address the pollution issues.”
Back in Vereeniging, Morosi watches her two young daughters and their friends ride their bikes through the puddles of raw sewage.
“My children are always sick with diarrhoea. I’m so angry – that’s why I haven’t even registered to vote.”
*Not his real name