FOLLOWING the recent devastating storm and floods in the eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality, the Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) along with other departments and academic institutions ran a two-day (5-6 May 2019) clean-up activity.
This took place at various beaches and harbour sites around Durban.
Also read: UPDATE: Keep off flooded roads says Durban mayor | Highway Mail
These activities form part of the Presidential Good Green Deeds Campaign which is aimed at galvanising communities to take part in the protection of the environment.
Resulting from the heavy rains and floods, Durban beaches and the Port of Durban were swamped with marine debris – mostly plastic.
As part of the department’s response to the litter problem, that is not only unsightly, but also life threatening to marine life, more than 500 volunteers, including 100 firefighters, focused their attention on six sites around Durban.
The 100 firefighters from the Department’s Working on Fire (WoF) programme in KwaZulu-Natal were not only part of the environmental clean-up in Durban, some of them were also affected by the recent floods and had their properties either damaged or destroyed.
WoF has also placed around 700 firefighters on alert to provide support to the provincial disaster management centre in KwaZulu-Natal.
Further intervention that need scaling up include the design of a rain water harvesting system to be part of development and/or employ retrofitting of innovative water conservation technologies for water harvesting and grey water reuse.
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