Members of Amanzimtoti Country Club (ACC) and Conservancy and residents are up in arms over eThekwini Municipality’s continued lack of action regarding sewage pollution in the Umbogintwini River.
Gill Symons said she first noticed the problem over three weeks ago and, together with ACC chairman, Dave Richardson, has tirelessly bombarded various municipal departments to rectify the problem, to no avail.
“I walk my dogs there every day and you can see piles of sewage floating down the river,” she said.
“When there are heavy rains, the problem abates, but then it returns. When the tide goes out, you can see the banks caked in sewage. It smells really bad.”
Gill said samples were taken of the water by the municipality on Friday, 7 November, but in an email addressed to her from the pollution department, they said there were no visible signs of sewage in the river and nothing conclusive could be determined from the samples. The results of the samples were never made public.
Dave first reported the problem nearly three weeks ago and received his first reference number on 7 November. “Whenever I phone, I get passed from one department to another. A health department employee took a walk to the river with me and agreed there is a problem, but to date I have received no comeback,” he said.
Dave was informed by the municipality that the levels of E.coli were ‘acceptable’ in the river.
“We have had this problem on and off for about the past five years. We can’t accept this.”
There is suspicion the sewage could be from the construction site of a sewage pump adjacent to the informal settlement upriver in Isipingo. However, repeated queries to eThekwini Municipality for comment went unanswered and no response was forthcoming at the time of going to print.
