Is the Boksburg Lake ready for the festive spirit?

For many years, Boksburg Lake has been abuzz with Christmas activities during the festive season, as many locals enjoy visits to the public amenity to have their Christmas parties with their colleagues or have a picnic with families and friends.

However, with the summer holiday season arriving, this invites an obvious question of the facility’s state of affairs and safety at this once bustling and popular green space.
The Boksburg Advertiser has last week revisited the area to check the state of the facility and the progress made in the latest R34m project to improve the state of the lake’s water.

We found despite the continual pumping of millions of rand into the rehabilitation projects, lack of maintenance and vandals continue to undermine the facility, reversing the multimillion-dollar work done to give the facility a facelift.
Thanks to the lack of maintenance and security, the recently upgraded facility is now choked by long grass and vegetation and sprouted mini-jungles of overgrown trees. Some sections are turned into dumpsites for household waste and other debris.

The new park equipment, including taps and sections of the fence and the gates, has been stolen or vandalised.
To make matters worse, the quality of the water has deteriorated to the point that its colour has changed to shiny grey. With the higher summer temperatures, visitors and nearby residents are forced to put up with toxic fumes emanating from the coal-like lake water.

Despite the given undertaking that municipal workers would regularly fish out waste from the newly constructed weir system built across the lake to trap and capture waste and limit it from entering the main body of the lake, the weir is now overwhelmed by litter, silt, debris, trees and general waste, rendering it worthless.

The water tunnels under the weir system are almost clogged, hampering the filtration process and threatening the structure.
This has resulted in parts of the water body, particularly next to the shores, turning into an ugly sight with a sea of solid waste material and other pollutants.

While the City of Ekurhuleni (CoE) has not yet responded to our request for comment on this matter, it appears the contractors have left the site. It is still unclear if they have completed the second phase of the R34m three-phase rehabilitation project, which started in October 2021.

The city told this publication that despite outstanding works to upgrade the facility, it was planning to reopen the cordoned-off sections of the public facility by the end of September this year.
However, by the looks of things, these areas were still not fully accessible when this publication visited the area this week.
In addition to the R34m to breathe new life into the lake water, the CoE has also over the past couple of years spent at least over R20m on several projects aimed at restoring the facility after decades of neglect.

These include tenders to renovate the boathouse, construction of an amphitheatre, and the about R15m multiphase project to install high-mast lighting, landscaping of the park, outdoor gym equipment, braai facilities, installation of park furniture and fencing.
As part of his environment oversight committee report on Boksburg Lake delivered during the August council meeting, Ward 32 Clr Marius de Vos said the facility had decayed into an unsightly, unsafe, and contaminated water body amid the millions of taxpayers’ money spent over the past couple of financial years.

“Of great concern to the local community is the poor, unpleasant stench of the water in the lake and aesthetically unattractive litter that lines the margins of the lake.
“The weir built across the lake, the floating plants, gabions on the edges and aerators to be mounted on the lake are clear-cut ingredients to prepare for disaster number three in Boksburg after the recent fatal gas cylinder leak in Angelo informal settlement.

“I would like to implore the environment oversight committee to go beyond visiting projects under construction within their ambit, and to visit the Erwat sewage treatment plant where approved bioremediation methods are applied to treat contaminated water. Boksburg Lake is no different.”

Mowing backlog more likely to hit the city
De Vos said his recent interaction with the parks depot revealed grass and weeds would not receive any attention soon, as all of this department’s vehicles, including tractors, have still not been serviced, regardless of the previous winter season that should have been used to service vehicles.

“The much-needed tender for the purchase of spare parts has also not yet been concluded. This alone has the potential to completely cripple service delivery.
“Taxpayers should brace themselves for a festive season branded with unsightly conditions in our parks and public open spaces. Ponds and lakes are now official sewage disposal catchment areas.
“All these defects speak of no political will and vision by the current leadership in the council,” said the source.

Residents who used to frequently visit the park with their friends and families consistently criticised the city for the years of neglect, which they said have scared them away from the once-bustling public lake. They also cited safety as another reason for avoiding the area.
Others said the park, which is left to become home to the homeless, holds a lot of memories for them and it is sad seeing it in this condition.

Also Read: WATCH: A look at Boksburg Lake water rehabilitation project progress