Scepticism over Mzimkulu River plans

Scientist Professor Anthony Turton feels that inappropriate solutions are being thrown at misdiagnosed problems when it comes to the proposed weir across the Mzimkulu River.

In 2021, Ugu District Municipality announced plans to set up a weir across the river in order to provide more potable water for the region and reduce saline intrusion at the St. Helen’s Rock pump station.

However, at a panel discussion recently hosted by The Green Net at the Port Shepstone Country Club, Turton said the Mzimkulu River is one of the two last free-flowing rivers in South Africa, saying that they are not economically significant for various reasons but they are culturally and ecologically important.

“What is happening is that we are throwing inappropriate solutions at misdiagnosed problems and the perfect example is the weir that is being proposed on the Mzimkulu River. This river of ours is as ecologically significant as the Okavango River. It is an enormous river that follows into a desert and we don’t flow into the desert, we flow into the ocean but the biodiversity that is in the ocean is dependent on the nutrients being transported through the Mzimkulu River. We have dammed all our rivers, the Umzimvubu and the Mzimkulu Rivers are the only ones that have a natural blood pulse. It is the heartbeat of the water,” said Turton, adding that this is not needed because there are no massive factories in the area that depend on the river.

The Green Net invited panelists such as Turton, Desmond D’sa of the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance (SDCEA), and Paddy Norman of the Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa (WESSA) to the discussion.

Norman of WESSA said their motto is: people caring for the earth and that is not the soil in your garden but the whole planet.
He said that they need to think on both a big and small scale and everything in between.
He explained that the earth is not a static object, saying that it is a whole complex system.

“It has living organisms and non-living components. Rivers and estuaries are a part of that picture, and by a river, I do not mean just the water, it is more than that. An estuary is even more so because the definition of an estuary is a transition between a river and the sea and that means it has a little bit of everything. From the point of view of the environment that makes it a challenge but also a fascinating area to look at. Our Mzimkulu estuary has an incredible variety of wildlife, you may never see it but I have seen a turtle swimming there. Did you know we had turtles on this coast?” asked Norman.

Meanwhile, Joan Gallagher of The Green Net said they got involved in 2021 after the proposal for a weir.

“We had a group discussion where we invited engineers, farmers, the Department of Economic Development, Tourism and Environmental Affairs, Ugu District Municipality, WESSA Lower South Coast, John Irven, Alex Skene, Sean Lange, Professor Anthony Turton, and others. At this meeting, we were told that the discussion was premature as the public participation process had not yet opened. Now we embarked on this Mzimkulu River panel discussion,” said Gallagher.

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