Talk on Swartkops River pollution shocks audience
AN environmental activist’s talk about the rise and fall of the Swartkops River and the sources of the river’s pollution drew gasps and applause in Port Elizabeth this week.
The Newton Park Library auditorium was packed when Zwartkops Conservancy environmental officer Jenny Rump delivered an address on some of the sources of pollution in the Swartkops River.
The river stretches for 190km – from the peaks of the Groot Windhoek Mountains it snakes its way through Despatch, Uitenhage and Port Elizabeth. As it meanders to the Windy City and into its 16km estuary, the river faces an environmental onslaught from a multitude of sources, Rump said.
Alien vegetation, raw sewage, industry feed and waste, household waste, salt pans, bad farming practices, abattoirs and sand mining are among the contributors to the degradation of the river.
Recent reports of water samples taken from the embattled river show reading levels have climbed steadily over the years. And a new, independent study carried out by a Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University academic revealed that there were dangerously high levels of heavy metals, including cadmium, in the river’s fish species.
In 2007, the auditor-general released results of an environmental audit of the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality which revealed a number of potential health hazards. One of these indicated that water samples taken from the Swartkops River had “excessive waste, exceeding acceptable limits in certain identified areas”.
“Some of the feeder rivers that flow into the Swartkops go through areas which have horrible levels of pollution. For example, all manner of household waste and sewage leaks stream into the Motherwell storm water canal, which spills its contents into the Swartkops,” said Rump, pointing to images of mountains of waste and grey, milky water gushing out of the canal. These drew gasps from the audience.
Although the content of her talk made for gloomy listening, Rump is hopeful that small gains have been made to reverse the damage.
After considerable pressure and lobbying, the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Municipality installed an artificial wetland bed worth R7.1-million to curb pressure put on the Swartkops by the Motherwell canal. Also, the metro has endeavoured to install litter traps in storm-water canals whose contents make it into the Swartkops.
“There is a solution to all this, but it will cost money and time,” Rump said.
“We’ve lost the Redhouse River Mile because the metro could not guarantee the safety of the water for swimming. However, there are many things that work in the river’s favour: its estuary is the 11th most important in South Africa and has the third largest salt marsh area in the country.
“That is why we are working so hard to get the estuary declared a Ramsar site.”
The Zwartkops Conservancy has been unrelenting in its quest to ensure the Swartkops River remains in an environmentally sound state. It filed a motion more than two weeks ago in the Port Elizabeth High Court in a bid to compel the metro to release details of a July 3 2013 report filed in the metro minutes. The matter has been postponed twice.