The DA wants the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality to draw up a sewerage services master plan that can be used to prevent the city’s wastewater treatment works infrastructure from collapsing.
Mayoral candidate and MPL Retief Odendaal, the party’s Bay caucus leader, Rano Kayser, and Ward 1 councillor Dries van der Westhuyzen conducted an oversight visit to the wastewater treatment plant located in the Cape Recife Conservancy on Thursday.
Effluent, believed to be from a nearby settling pond, flows towards the beach, with a wide stretch along the sewage stream overgrown by reeds and invasive vegetation.
Odendaal said once a plan was drawn up and implemented, the municipality would be able to maintain treatment plants regularly and curb sewage spills that pollute beaches.
“Currently we have no direction. Nobody knows where we are going, what will be upgraded in five years and what is most vulnerable now and what is becoming more vulnerable in the short term and what needs to be replaced in 10 years.”
To address the crisis, Odendaal said, the metro needed a proper plan with a budget.
He said he would write to water and sanitation minister Pemmy Majodina and committee chair Leon Basson for the issue to be tabled by the portfolio committee in parliament.
“We want the [committee] to shine a spotlight on our wastewater treatment plants, which is something that the Brown Drop report does when it comes out and I expect that we will probably see one next year which will highlight the failures of our various wastewater treatment plants.”
Odendaal said he would also raise the matter in the co-operative governance portfolio committee of the Bhisho legislature.
Van der Westhuyzen said officials in the city had long denied that it was the municipality’s responsibility to maintain services such as roads and sewerage infrastructure in the area despite getting levies from residents.
“I eventually managed convinced them that it’s actually our responsibility.
“That’s why I’m so desperate to get acting city manager [Ted Pillay] here, so that I can take him through the area because it’s not just sewage; there are a number of issues here.
“So each department must have a plan on how they are going to address all the issues such as security, roads, landscaping, vandalism and the issue of non-spending of the budgets for these items.”
Infrastructure and engineering political head Buyelwa Mafaya and municipal spokesperson Sithembiso Soyaya did not respond to a request for comment.
The Herald
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