A high ranking delegation of Democratic Alliance (DA) envoys paid an oversight visit to the Hazelmere Dam on Friday, August 7.
Combining all levels of government to find solutions to this human rights challenge, the oversight group included member of parliament, Timothy Brauteseth, KZN provincial legislature member, Ann McDonnell, ward councillors Chris Langa and Geoff Pullan as well as non-partisan independent environmentalist, Peter Houston.
“While the construction to raise the level is welcomed, the dam has to be filled, and without rain and lots of it, our water saving initiatives must continue and water losses in municipalities who use Hazelmere have to be brought under control.” said McDonnell.
She added that in the long term, desalination may offer relief together with using appropriately treated water for appropriate activities.
“It may be expensive, but not as pricey as what not having water will do to our local economy – it is all about jobs,” she said.
Pullan said his main concern was that there had been no forward planning and nobody done anything about the dam for 21 years while the area’s consumption drastically increased.
“The dam belongs to the department of water and sanitation (DWA) and I blame them,” said Pullan.
He said Umgeni Water, who sells water on the DWA’s behalf, should have asked them to increase the dam a long time ago.
“Nobody sprang the King Shaka International Airport on them.”
He said it was common knowledge that with building a new airport comes a lot of additional new residential and commercial water uses and they should have planned for that.
The Inanda Dam gets its water from the Midlands and is currently 91 percent full. Pullan said, because the Hazelmere catchment area is so small, the DWA should have built a pipeline to the Hazelmere Dam when they built the airport.
DWA minister Nomvula Mokonyane said on July 15, during a visit to the dam that the dam would be desilted, but two days later her spokesperson said that no such plans have been finalised yet. Pullan said there were suggestions that the dam could not be desilted because the silt was poisonous. To test this theory, Pullan collected mud samples to be tested.
“If the silt tests negative for poison, the DWA should let the sand miners that pinch the sand from our rivers, send their trucks to take the silt away.”
Peter Houston, in his capacity as independent adviser, described the visit to the dam and seeing the impact of human activities on the catchment area as thought provoking.
He said it would be pointless to raise the dam wall without addressing social issues and the associated land-use practices because much of the catchment was overrun with various alien invasive species and is degraded by overgrazing.
“There is no quick-fix political solution here. Local, provincial and national government departments will have to work together,” he said.
He said private-public partnerships were needed, augmented by citizen action groups and non-profit organisations.
“The ANC and DA should rather shake hands than shake fists in the interest of common good,” he said.
Houston said Hazelmere was a litmus test for the future of South Africa.
