Ten tonnes of plastic removed from Driekoppies Dam

The Nkomazi Local Municipality’s (NLM) Community Services Department embarked on a major clean-up campaign of Driekoppies Dam on Wednesday, in partnership with the Komati Basin Water Authority (Kobwa) and SAPS Inland Water Policing and Diving Division.
This comes after a huge amount of waste, mostly plastic, was deposited into the dam during the recent floods.

“The waste issue started accumulating after the heavy rains that engulfed Nkomazi earlier in the year, but the illegal dumping and pollution by locals have always been an issue. We decided to engage various stakeholders to ask for intervention in cleaning up the dam. This is an operation that takes place biweekly, and this is the third time this year,” said Fritz Herold of NLM’s Community Services Department.

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According to him, the municipality has resorted to building a park in the area as a lasting solution to the problem. “We have had awareness campaigns involving the locals, to encourage them to keep the area clean, but that has not yielded in any positive results so far. So we decided to go for a lasting solution. We have already debushed the area in question and we will install benches and chairs so that people can have a sense of sentiment to the area and get more involved in the maintenance,” he said.

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Captain Pottie Potgieter of the police diving unit said water is their mandate and they are happy to be part of the campaign to help ensure it remains clean. “We have removed 10 tonnes of waste since we started cleaning up this river. The fact that it goes a 110km to Mozambique clearly indicates that so many people will get affected in the villages that use this water. It might seem like a small thing, but we are looking at it from the bigger picture. People use this river for fishing and farming. The plastic that floats here will eventually become what we call micro plastic.

The fish will get contaminated and the entire system would be compromised. There are people who take advantage of the river’s proximity to start businesses in the tourism sector, and while people might want to use boats, not one would want to do that on a dirty environment. The clean-up is preventing so many things that could go wrong, and we are happy to be part of it.”

Kobwa said the plastic waste is a problem, and while they do not have the capacity to clean the area up themselves, they are happy to be part of the campaign and have welcomed it. “We will be part of this cleaning process until pollution is no longer an issue. It is also very important to note that the Driekoppies Dam is usually clean and well kept. Though the recent floods did a number on us, we will ensure that the debris and plastic waste deposited in there is cleaned out.

“We supply raw water mostly used for irrigation, but we also would not like to make things harder for the people who have to treat the water and make it drinkable, hence our involvement in the clean-up campaign to ensure that everything around this water runs smooth and the end user is satisfied,” said Sakhiwe Nkomo, Kobwa’s director of operations.