Springs’ drinking water is safe, but the waste water is not

AfriForum’s blue drop results on Springs’ drinking water revealed that the city’s water was safe.

The green drop, tests on treated sewage water on the other hand, revealed the opposite.

AfriForum on March 17 released the results of several cities’ tests on the status of both blue drop for drinking water and that of the green drop for waste water.

The tests on the quality of the water at both the waste water plant and also of drinking water at Laerskool Jan van Riebeeck were done on February 20.

Markus Pawson, AfriForum’s community co-ordinator for Gauteng South, said their water tests on treated water from the Welgedacht plant exceeded the maximum requirements for water coming from a sewer plant.

It indicated that suspended solids were high, while the faecal coliform bacteria report showed that there was a high count of bacteria in the sample. There was E.Coli in the tested water, but within the allowed amounts.

Pawson said the suspended solids did not break up during treatment at the plant. This could be because the current amount of effluent to the plant was more than what it was designed and built for.

He said the government had a constitutional obligation to provide clean drinking water. The water Erwat returned to the streams and waterways will somehow and sometime land in the drinking water of people downstream from Springs.

Erwat personnel accompanied AfriForum on February 20 to take their own samples. Based on these, Erwat said they got different results.

Norah Motha, Erwat’s district manager DD5: Operations, said Erwat’s samples were taken to the ERLAB and analysed on February 20, while the AfriForum one was taken to the Waterlab the next day and analysed on February 27.

She also said the AfriForum results for suspended solids and faecal coliform bacteria/100ml were not accredited, while all ERLAB results are accredited.

She said Welgedacht “largely meets the general limits”.

The current capacity constraints made it unable to meet the special limits. These special limits will only be met when the current upgrading project was commissioned in June 2016.

At the time of going to press, Ekurhuleni Metro did not comment on the report.