Blesbokspruit Trust oblivious to sewage spill

While the raw sewage has spilt into Blesbokspruit on several occasions over the past year, the management of Grootvaly Blesbokspruit Conservation Trust was oblivious to the problem.

The Addie took Mike Wood, the Blesbokspruit reserve manager and Patrick Ganda, the trust’s environmental education officer, to the place on the Bakerton side of the Blesbokspruit where residents continually complain about the the dirty, smelly water that bubbles out of the manholes only metres from the spruit.

Zahoor Mohamed of Pintail Close in Bakerton revealed the continuous spillages in the spruit last week to the Addie, saying this raw sewage water freely flows into the spruit when the main sewage pipe gets blocked.

This pipe has been blocked on and off for the past year, often for more than a month at a time.

Patrick admits he sometimes detects a sewage odour coming from the spruit, but never knew where this stench was coming from.

The biggest spillage is usually close to the floating walkway where Patrick teaches about 5 000 children per year about the birds living in the wetland and the plant-life of Blesbokspruit.

Mike says although the thought of a sewage spill so close to the reserve is terrifying, they could not detect any change in the bird life.

Although there are fewer birds in the area closest to the perpetual sewage spill, among the bird species it is only the flamingos that are staying away.

The bird-life further up stream towards Marievale is healthy.

He says when a river or a wetland becomes poisonous to the bird life, the birds will move to another place.

Mike feels the situation at Blesbokspruit is not all doom and gloom, because an official aquatic and wetland bird count in January reflected that the bird-residents in Blesbokspruit have increased from 900 to 1 300.

Mike says something has to be done about these sewage spills and cleaning up the soil around the three manholes closest to Pintail Close that are still full of sewage debris.

Mariette Liefferink of the federation for a sustainable environment, who sits on national water committees says sewage seeping into dams and rivers is not an uncommon phenomenon.

In almost all these cases the faecal coliforms (f.coli) are very high.

Liefferink says it seems that there is a lack of action against sewage in our country’s water ways.

She says clean water is a basic right for everyone on earth and foresees that there will be more communities that will stage uprisings against local governments to get this basic right.

While it is uncommon that people will drink the water from a river, it is still possible that people will come into contact with river water while fishing, during spiritual rituals and for the irrigation of food plants which may influence the quality of food.

The water quality in our country will also be influenced because more clean water will have to be pumped into polluted water ways to dilute it.