South African rivers under threat

Last Sunday Carte Blanche (the investigative journalism programme) had an insert highlighting the intense environmental threat rivers throughout South Africa are under because of a combination of collapsing sewerage works, expanding squatter camps camps in their catchment areas, and unregulated commercial effluent.

Below is the transcript from that show.

You can also watch the programme by clicking here.

E. coli

Date: 16 May 2010
Producer: Liz Fish
Presenter: Bongani Bingwa
Show: Carte Blanche

Rivers throughout South Africa are under intense environmental threat because of a combination of collapsing sewerage works, expanding squatter camps in their catchment areas, and unregulated commercial effluent.

People’s health is seriously threatened and water sports along the coast are being heavily affected.

In East London, surfer Billy Kruger was diagnosed with E. coli infection after surfing at Nahoon Beach. Billy was rushed to hospital a few days later with extreme abdominal pain.

One of the most extreme and high-profile recent cases was in KwaZulu-Natal where author and historian RW Johnson went swimming in the Mpenjati Nature Reserve lagoon and nearly died. He contracted necrotizing fasciitis, a flesh eating organism that breeds in sewerage sludge and gets into the blood stream.

RW Johnson (Author & historian): ‘I stubbed my toe. It was sore, but I did not really think much of it, showered, cleaned it. And the next day it got a little bit worse and then the day after that it got considerably worse and I became quite feverish and indeed had great difficulty getting to the doctor with it. I was fainting and having to crawl across the floor of the garage to get to the car. Luckily the doctor had seen a similar case once before. I may say in that case the man died, so he knew what he was dealing with and I was instantly rushed off to hospital.’

The next 24 hours were a nightmare. All Johnson’s systems failed and doctors were forced to amputate his leg above the knee to remove the flesh-eating organism. He was unconscious for a month and there was slim hope of him surviving: 89% of people who contract necrotizing fasciitis don’t make it.

RW: ‘It is almost a miracle that I am alive. You don’t imagine that cutting your foot on a rock while you are swimming in a lagoon is likely to be that serious.’

Highly polluted beaches and rivers along the coast are run by different municipalities and are in differing states of collapse. But the most surprising in this litany of failing sewerage systems is Cape Town. Generally regarded as a well-run, efficient city, the Cape Town Metropole has 27 rivers emptying onto its coastline. And only one of them is 100% safe for recreational use. A recent report by the City states that the river and coastal water quality is poor and poses a serious threat to the health of its citizens and the environment.

Bongani Bingwa (Carte Blanche presenter): ‘I am upstream near the source of the Hout Bay River. All along the Cape there are rivers, pristine like this near the source, but it’s when the water empties into the sea that the E. coli levels are simply off the charts. At Hout Bay beach my feet would not be in this water.’

Dr Justin O’Riain, environmental officer for the Hout Bay Residents Association, takes up the story:

Dr Justin O’Riain (Environmental Officer: HBRA): ‘We have a river which runs from Table Mountain source all the way down to Hout Bay beach. And about two-thirds of the way down, we hit a very serious source of contamination. And essentially we have a whole lot of people living in a very densely populated area, inadequate sanitation, and almost all of the faeces is draining off this area, down into the storm water, into our river. The key thing here with Hout Bay River is that it empties out onto a very busy beach… and therein [lies] the contacts for being contaminated by the river.’

In a desperate effort to get the City of Cape Town to take the issue seriously, the Hout Bay Residents Association asked epidemiologist Jo Barnes to test the water coming from this storm water drain.

Dr Barnes’s tests showed the E. coli count to be a staggering 9-billion per 100ml. The acceptable standards are 1500/100ml.

Dr Jo Barnes (Epidemiologist): ‘Unfortunately it ends up being close to, or the same as, an open sewer; it’s that bad.’

This polluted water is extremely dangerous. Dr Barnes became extremely ill after testing the Hout Bay River, despite her protective clothing. Dr O’Riain’s child spent five days on a drip after picking up an infection through contact with his soiled shoes.

Len Swimmer, chair of the residents association, says the health situation is critical.

Len Swimmer (Chairman: HBRA): ‘We have had a horse die, we have had dogs die, we have had people infected, we have had a whole lot of people with ear infections… but nothing is happening. If nothing is done about it we are going to have a real pandemic.’

In December last year Nicky Steel, like most Hout Bay residents, thought nothing of wading through the river as it crossed the beach into the sea. At the time she had an open wound on her leg, which became heavily infected.

Nicky Steel (Hout Bay resident): ‘I went to the GP and he checked me out, and what had happened was I obviously had a bacterial infection because every other cut on my body had become infected, and he did all the usual tests to find out… and he suspected it to be E. coli.’

Bongani: ‘At its worst, what were you going through?’

Nicky: ‘Absolutely splitting headaches, diarrhoea, nauseous, not wanting to eat… not wanting to get off the bed.’

After several rounds of antibiotics her leg wound cleared, but she is now fighting a parasitic infection in her bowel. But there is no doubt in her mind that she picked up the infection wading through the river. But it’s difficult to have 100% proof.

Dr O’Riain: ‘What the authorities realise, it’s almost impossible to prove, and therein lies the rub, because you can let it go, and let it go and you can’t prove it.’

RW Johnson: ‘I don’t think there is the slightest doubt, I picked it up in the lagoon. And indeed the lagoon was immediately shut as unsafe for bathing and local MP Mike Ellis made a great fuss about it and I know it was cordoned off for quite a while.’

But it’s like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. People become extremely ill before the authorities wake up to the high E. coli levels and only then close the beach, or put up a warning sign.

Right across the country there are extremely high incidences of diarrhoea, with 43 000 deaths each year. And people living in informal settlements are the worst affected.

Hout Bay residents have been lobbying the City of Cape Town for years about the raw sewerage and rubbish dumped directly into the storm water drains.

Len: ‘What they did at the moment is they put in the very temporary band aid, with the retention ponds. And they put in some pipes, but the pipes are so narrow that it can’t take the massive flow of sewerage. So the pipes are blocked most of the time and they put in a pump which never worked.’

This storm water drain is supposed to be diverted into the sewerage system, but it is almost always blocked.

Dr O’Riain: ‘Winter rains come and flush the township; it’s like flushing a giant toilet because everything that has been sitting there gets flushed into the river, and that’s when it’s a lethal cocktail.’

Man (Sewerage pumper): ‘During the winter the water runs straight across to the river. But now it runs into the sewerage system.’

The lack of maintenance and inadequate funding is the slow disaster that has been happening right across the Cape Flats.

Democratic Alliance Councillor Bert van Dalen has been putting the spotlight on the sanitation crisis and pressuring the City council to admit that it has a problem.

Bert van Dalen (DA Councillor): ‘Funding for sewerage works and infrastructure has gotten behind in what is needed. We want to sensitise Council and the people to the problem that we have so we can turn this about.’

Councillor Clive Justus is the mayoral committee member for utilities services. He says that they inherited a collapsing sewerage system where inadequate funds were allocated to maintenance, but claims that things are changing.

Clive Justus (MAYCO: Utilities Services): ‘In terms of sanitation services, we have moved from R75-million in 2006 to this year close to R300-million.’

Compounding the problem is that when the City was consolidated into a metropole, retirement packages were offered to senior staff and a treasure trove of institutional knowledge was lost, while 30% of the vacated posts stayed empty in an attempt to meet racial quotas.

Kevin Samson is the manager of Wastewater in City of Cape Town.

Kevin Samson (Manager: Wastewater): ‘We have lost several of the top and experienced engineers. Whilst we are getting younger and junior people into the City I think that skills lost is having a debilitating effect on the way we do operations.’

Cape Town is surrounded by smaller municipalities whose sewerage systems are failing and polluting rivers because of a lack of maintenance and funds, and these toxic rivers drain across the Cape Flats.

Dr Barnes: ‘I can quote you a local politician in one of these towns that once told me out straight that ‘there are no votes in sewerage’. In other words, he will only put his political will into something that will benefit the political process.’

The historic tourist Mecca and university town of Stellenbosch is one of those municipalities. They recently admitted they pump sewerage into the rivers because they cannot cope.

This [on screen] is where the Plankenberg River meets the Eerste River in Stellenbosch.

Bongani: ‘The smell from this water is absolutely shocking. I am in fact in the heartland of Stellenbosch, surrounded by some of the country’s most affluent homes. This water flows downstream and goes past our top vineyards and is used for agricultural purposes and it eventually lands up on our beaches.’

Rodney Russel (Stellenbosch resident): ‘I promise you, no one does anything. The last answer I got was, ‘We must hope and pray the rain comes quick.’ I mean, that is not an answer. But no one from the Municipality… only their workers… have been here.’

Rodney Russel pays over R6000 a month for rates, water, lights and sewerage. When he moved here 20 years ago his children swam and fished in the river. Today he says they would die if they touched it. He wasn’t wrong. On his advice, we returned at night to sample the river – when the smell is reported to be at its worst – and discovered raw faeces floating past. And the E. coli count was an astonishing 330 000/100ml.

Rodney: ‘I promise you, it’s unbearable. You have a braai on a Sunday and that smell comes through here – you throw your meat away; you don’t want it, you don’t want to eat!’

Bongani: ‘This is the Eerste River just before it flows into the sea. At this point it is mostly effluent and not really even river water. So the City of Cape Town does have a point – this was not caused as a result of its failures. But this polluted water from Stellenbosch is still flowing onto Cape Town beaches, with absolutely no warning for beach users.’

Last year the Cape Metropolitan Coastal Water Quality Monitoring Committee reported that from Macassar Beach to Gordon’s Bay the E. coli levels were over 15 000/100 ml, whereas the acceptable levels are around 1000/100ml.

Dr Barnes: ‘We have got behind us at various intervals three rivers that enter the bay here that are at times highly polluted. They empty themselves into the sea behind us here and it provides foodstuffs for some of the sea creatures to eat; people catch those for food, and the infection circle is simply perpetuated.’

We decided to test each river on three different occasions per river and found that the E. coli levels in the Sir Lowry’s River and the Soet River were over 10 000/100 ml.

We spoke to Henry du Plessis, Cape Town’s director of Roads and Storm Water, who signed off on the Coastal and Inland Water report, which states that the poor quality of the water is due to failing infrastructure and sewer blockages. Surprisingly, Du Plessis insists there is not a problem with the sea.

Bongani: ‘What is the state of our rivers and coastal waters?’

Henry du Plessis (Director: Roads & Storm Water): ‘There is room for improvement. As indicated to you, 71-75% of the False Bay and Atlantic coastline is compliant.’

Dr Barnes: ‘These figures in that report are smoothed averages, so they are averages over a number of quarters of the year, or over quite some time. That removes the peak pollution values out of the graph so you can’t see them. But the risks, the dangers, are at those peaks.’

And the biggest failures are in the winter, when the whole sewerage and storm water system becomes overburdened. The most dangerous time to swim in False Bay is when the first winter rains flush the raw effluent sitting all over the Cape Flats.

Dr Barnes: ‘The City is trying its best to address this, but they simply don’t have the resources. What I find worrisome is not that they can’t get to everything, but the levels of denial that exist in some places.’

Sometimes it borders on the absurd: one City official claimed that the high E. coli count on Hout Bay beach was from the seagulls. And although the City of Cape Town may boast the highest number of blue flag beaches in South Africa…

Bert: ‘If we continue on the trend that we are on at the moment, our Blue Flag beaches will definitely be in jeopardy.’

Dr O’Riain: ‘You can think of a family of tourists. They have been for a wonderful meal at one of the restaurants in the harbour or along the beach and they go for a recreational walk across the river and the entire family can he contaminated. What will they attribute it to? They will attribute it to the food they ate. The knock-on effect is huge; it’s international tourists, it’s local people, it’s kids swimming on the beach. Ear, throat infections are common in winter.’

Dr Barnes: ‘Pumping sewerage into the sea is not international best practice; the sea is not a delete button.’

Bongani: ‘Aren’t you just being alarmist here?’

Dr Barnes: ‘The large teaching hospitals in Capet Town are over the summer months running dedicated rehydration wards for the vast number of diarrhoea [patients] and I can’t believe that anyone would think that large tonnages of sewerage can enter rivers and that I’m alarmist in saying that’s a bad thing.’

We asked Councillor Van Dalen if he would swim at the Strand, knowing the high levels of pollution:

Bert: ‘(laughs) I wouldn’t swim there.’

Henry: ‘Generally speaking, it is safe to swim [in] our coastal beaches.’

Bongani: ‘So Strand, can you guarantee that is safe?’

Henry: ‘Yes, I swim at Strand.’

Bongani: ‘Fish Hoek, can you guarantee that is safe?’

Henry: ‘Again, yes.’

Bongani: ‘Hout Bay beach?’

Henry: ‘Again, one has to be careful when we deal with these questions. Generally speaking it’s safe to swim on theses beaches, yes.’

Bongani: ‘Swim at Hout Bay at your own risk?’

Dr O’Riain: ‘The western side? No, not for love nor money. In winter the whole sea smells of that smell you get when you open a manhole. If you want to be an ENT come to Hout Bay in the winter.’

Henry: ‘When we find that a beach is not compliant we will put notices on our beaches.’

Bongani: ‘I have been to Hout Bay beach. The sign, you have to go looking for it.’

Henry: ‘Well, we have not had any complaints from any of the beach-goers about that.’

Nicky: ‘I feel quite disappointed. It’s such a beautiful place and we have chosen to live here because it’s so beautiful and we have got this beach. But you just don’t want to go anywhere near the water and obviously it’s a worry for walking dogs – you wouldn’t bring children anywhere near here.’

The grim reality is that when the situation gets out of control – as it did in the Mpanjati Lagoon in KZN – the outcome is like something from a science-fiction movie, as RW Johnson discovered when he lost his leg to flesh eating microbes. The road to recovery is slow, and the bizarre consequences of a stubbed toe will remain with Johnson for the rest of his life.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER:

While every attempt has been made to ensure this transcript or summary is accurate, Carte Blanche or its agents cannot be held liable for any claims arising out of inaccuracies caused by human error or electronic fault. This transcript was typed from a transcription recording unit and not from an original script, so due to the possibility of mishearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, errors cannot be ruled out.

Image: FLICKR/*Kicki*’s/Under Creative Commons License

Tags: Carte Blanche, environmental threat, South African rivers