Call to improve municipality air quality before it hits ‘crisis levels’

THE air quality in the eThekwini Municipality is poor and this has led to calls for urgent intervention before the situation reaches crisis levels.

Siphumelele Nowele, chief director of environmental management at KZN Economic Development, Tourism and Environmental Affairs, tabled a report on the air quality in the province during a portfolio committee meeting yesterday.

The report, especially as it relates to eThekwini Municipality, shocked committee members who insisted that immediate action be taken.

A map showing areas of pollution revealed that places like Cato Ridge, Westville, eManzimtoti and the N3 and N2 north and south corridors were of concern.

“eThekwini is South Africa’s fastest growing large metropolitan area and second-largest industrial node,” she said. “Durban is experiencing rapid densification and urban sprawl into widespread formal and informal areas to accommodate such rapid growth.

“This is compounded by incompatible land uses which are often a legacy of the past town planning, meaning that industry and residential areas are juxtaposed, and air quality may be compromised.”

Nowele said shipping and road traffic also presented major sources of air pollution in Durban.

“The prime example is the South Durban Basin, which has been the focus of much attention over the past two decades owing to health studies, which suggested that air quality is compromising quality of life and effectively breaches the constitutional right to ‘a clean and healthy environment’,” she said.

Nowele said part of the solution would be to have experts and working equipment to monitor pollution levels, adding that it was difficult to trace pollutants, once they were in the air, back to the polluter.

IFP committee member Joshua Mazibuko said: “As a resident of eThekwini, I fear I do not have very long to live.

“We need to know what the department is doing to mitigate the impact of environmental pollution.”

DA committee member Heinz de Boer called for a fundamental shift in the way business was done, saying there should be a discussion even on the simple things, like the planting of trees.

He said many municipalities should be assisted in managing air quality as it was clear they could not manage the matter on their own.

MEC Nomusa Dube-Ncube said the department had never had an air-quality plan and would now be making sure that this was addressed.

“There is no way, even if we wanted to, that we will be able to deal with the pollution across the province.

“There will be an evaluation of the air quality monitoring systems out there, these could be transferred to municipalities and employ people that will deal with the air quality.”

She said they would capacitate municipalities to do the work.