Cape Town - Residents living in Camps Bay and surrounds say they are concerned over the City of Cape Town’s seemingly “go-to directive” to discharge sewage into the ocean upon failure of its outfalls.
This comes after a pump failure at the Green Point outfall just over a week ago, which led the City to release discharge into the ocean, an emergency measure the municipality also carried out when its pump station in Camps Bay experienced difficulties.
Camps Bay Ratepayers Association chairperson, Chris Willemse, said they noticed that whenever the pump station failed, the City simply discharged raw sewage into the ocean.
“What’s unfortunate is that when it’s working, sewage is pumped into the bay, about 700m off Maiden’s Cove.
“That’s approximately five million litres of raw sewage into the ocean off Camps Bay daily through the Marine Outfall Plant onto Camps Bay beach, close to Glen Beach.
“There’s no difference anymore and the City, against all the science available, continues to claim that this is not an environmental disaster and obfuscates the issue of a proper solution to the problem.
“The MOPs (Marine Outfall Plant) at Green Point and Hout Bay carry much higher loads.
“The least the City could do to address this, is to install a treatment plant next to the MOP to treat the water to an acceptable level before pumping it into the ocean,” Willemse said.
Mayco member for water and sanitation, Zahid Badroodien, said marine outfalls discharged screened effluent far from the shore.
Badroodien said the waste is diluted to low levels by the ocean, with naturally occurring biological methods helping to break down harmful bacteria.
“It is important to note that the marine outfalls only discharge 5% of the City’s total wastewater.
“The City is also undertaking additional work to identify options to improve the discharge quality at all marine outfalls.”
Badroodien said the pump failure at the Green Point outfall had been resolved, and the City recorded no overflows since the initial incident at the end of September.
“Proactive maintenance is ongoing at the Green Point outfall.
“There will be two large and two smaller pumps active by the end of the week.
“The pump station now has additional redundancy, meaning that if one or more pumps fail the station remains functional, which will reduce the risk of overflows into the ocean,” Badroodien said.
Stellenbosch University’s (SU) Department of Global Health senior lecturer, Dr Jo Barnes, said there have been many instances of documented sewage intrusion into the ocean around Cape Town.
She said over recent years, the volume and number of such incidents increased substantially.
Barnes referenced the study done in Hout Bay together with colleague, Professor Leslie Petrik and her team from the University of the Western Cape, to look at the scientific question on the size of the impact zone of intrusions of sewage into the sea.
Barnes said the results were disquieting, as the chemical compounds in pharmaceuticals and personal care products were present in samples over a far wider area than engineering models usually assume.
“A few street blocks from the sea the count was over 8 million organisms per 100ml water (the SA Water Quality Guidelines for Coastal Marine Waters recreational use is below 500 organisms per 100ml water).
“Where the river runs over the beach and mixes with the seawater, the E. coli count was still 10000 organisms per 100ml water.
“This is not a surprise since the City’s results from April 30 to September 3, 2024, were over the limit on 58% of the sampling occasions.
“When I took the samples, no warning signs alerted the public to avoid the contaminated area or any indications of health risks.
“There are inadequate regulatory strategies to limit the risk and very inadequate oversight to enforce those that exist,” Barnes said.
Cape Argus