Combined effort needed to save Toti River

What is the solution to keep the Toti River clean?

That was the question which prompted Toti Conservancy to host a Toti rivers summit on Wednesday, 9 July at the Toti library activities room.

Represented were the Provincial Department of Water Affairs, eThekwini Municipality’s department of parks and recreation, and natural resources, the Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa (Wessa), AfriForum, Toti Canoe Club, Army Saints and the community.

Unfortunately, a key figure missing from the summit was Dr Andrew Mather of the eThekwini Department of Environmental Development and Planning, who is in charge of rivers and estuaries management plans that have been developed for some of the city’s rivers.

Since 2007 the Toti and Little Amanzimtoti rivers have been graded D, highly degraded, a far cry from what is needed to get the Toti River re-classified as a recreational river, which the conservancy is pushing for.

“We need the water quality to be better than at present. We can’t have unacceptable levels of E.coli present,” said conservancy chairman, Laura Taylor.

To get the river re-classified will be a long process and an immediate solution needs to be found.

“This year has seen the community rolls up its sleeves and clean the rivers themselves,” said Laura, who praised the Army Saints and the team from CombatCoaching.com gym for taking the initiative to clean water hyacinth, lettuce and litter from the river.

“It is fantastic that there are so many people concerned about the the state of the river,” said Laura.

However, all these efforts are a short-term solution.

According to Bruce Blake of the parks department, the river is not in its natural state anymore and has been canalised. “We need to focus on damage control and clean up the pollution, which will always come. We need litter traps and silt traps,” he said.

A continued saving grace of the river are seasonal floods and high tides, which cause the river to naturally breach or raise the water to an exceptable level for parks to get permission to artificially breach the mouth.

Many are of the opinion that the removal of the weir before Chain Rocks will allow the river to occasionally breach itself naturally. The flood of saltwater into the estuary will kill off E.coli and wash out any residual hyacinth.

According to a study released by the municipality, the weir was man-built to keep the water level of the lagoon at a suitable level for recreation.

However, if the weir is removed and the sand bar does not build up to a level high enough to keep the sea out for a substantial time, the mouth will remain open and the lagoon will be drained.

“We need to come up with a plan, form a small working group and work together with the authorities on which is the best way forward,” said Laura.