KLOOF Country Club’s general manager Pam Mayberry is frustrated with ongoing sewage seepage adjacent to the fourth hole on the golf course.
“It jeopardises our business because, at one point, the odour between the third and fourth hole was so bad, we considered closing the course for a few days. Luckily, the smell dissipated, but the sewage is still flowing. It’s a serious problem. We had a lot of fish dying in our dams,” says Mayberry.
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Kloof Country Club is 95 years old and has 950 members. Of these, 650 are golf club members, and the course sees an average of 3 000 rounds of golf played per month.
Assistant golf director Ryan Welsh said the sewage has been an ongoing issue for the last eight weeks. The golf club staff have notified the municipality on numerous occasions with no resolution. Welsh said the raw sewage constantly bubbles up from the ground near the M13 freeway.
“The club has registered several complaints with the municipality. On four separate occasions, someone has arrived to conduct an inspection. One of the municipal employees exposed the manhole before giving the club management feedback that the manhole was not the sewage source,” the assistant golf director told the Highway Mail.
Mayberry said the club had experienced similar intermittent issues at the same location in the past.
She said, “Prior to this, over the last few years, the problem reared its head now and then. Since we had our biggest championship of the year on September 9 and 10, the free-flowing sewage has been a constant problem.”
Operations manager at the neighbouring Kloof and Highway SPCA, Sarah van Heerden says that their conservancy dam was affected by the country club’s sewage issues.
“The water comes into our dam from the country club stream. We have wildlife in the dam – fish, terrapin and other indigenous animals. You could see a thick film floating on the surface of the water, and lots of fish came to the surface, gasping for air,” says Van Heerden.
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A decision was made to drain the dam, and the staff, wearing protective boots and gloves, climbed into the water with fish nets to relocate the wildlife and remove the septic water, thereafter, refilling the dam with clean water.
Van Heerden says they had the dam water analysed, with astonishing results.
“The water analysis found the E. coli levels were six times higher than they should be. It’s not good enough as there’s animal life here in the conservancy, plus from the human perspective, the water goes beyond our property to residences farther downstream,” says Van Heerden.
The animal protection organisation uses the dam water to clean the kennels, to keep their costs to a minimum.
“If we can’t use the dam water for cleaning the kennels, we must go onto our municipal supply. This is both a health and financial issue for us,” says van Heerden.
In response to a query from the Highway Mail about the Kloof Country Club’s sewage complaint, senior communications officer Princess Nkabane of the Ethekwini Municipality’s Media Relations Office replied, “The City attends to all manhole blockages when they have been reported, and this one is no exception. The welfare of our residents is always a priority.”
