With his hands tucked deep in his pockets, Kas Lubbe walks solemnly on the scenic banks of a stretch of the highly polluted Vaal River in Vereeniging.
“This is part of the problem,” remarks Lubbe, signalling to the serene-looking waters of the boating estate he manages on the Vaal.
“When people visit the river, this is what they see You can’t see the E.coli (the faecal coliforms) in the water while you’re walking here.
“You have to read the reports - and this water is tested by Rand Water - to see how dangerous the river really is.”
Just a few hundred metres away, running beneath the luxurious fleet of boats docked by holidaymakers, a foul, stinking torrent of greenish-grey sewage pours straight into the river through a stormwater inlet.
“This is raw sewage and it’s been going straight into the river for months, 24/7, like this,” Lubbe explains.
Across the road, the source of the spillage lies pooled like a deep stain at a failing pump station run by the embattled Emfuleni local municipality, which is under administration.
“You see how they have turned the river into an open sewer,” shouts Lubbe, above the roar of the murky sewage gushing “like a waterfall” into the stormwater canal and into the river. “It’s a disgrace.”
In recent months, sewage spills into the Vaal - a major water source feeding Gauteng’s economy - have led to massive fish die-offs downstream in towns like Parys and near Orkney, raised serious public health concerns and has affected the tourism and agricultural sector.
Lubbe blames the “catastrophic” spillages on Emfuleni’s ailing network of pump stations. “The pump stations paint the best picture, because you see how the sewer is running everywhere.
“Even if they had all the sewage treatment plants working, the pump stations are not getting it up there.”
Every week, Lubbe checks on those in his vicinity, reporting to colleagues at Save the Vaal Environment (Save), a local environmental watchdog.
“I’m going to start a company called Shitty Tours,” he jokes. “I’ll charge R50 a person. If you want a mask, it will cost a little more.”
Alongside him Michael Gaade, a Save committee member, points out how it has a Whatsapp group with Emfuleni officials to alert municipal authorities to spillages and breakdowns. “It just doesn’t get fixed or if it does, it doesn’t last long The other day I found a report which I thought was recent, but it’s actually from over a decade ago of a meeting between Save, Emfuleni and the Department of Water. This pollution has been happening for years.”
At another collapsed pump station, a sign reading, “Beware. You’ll be killed”, is painted on its exterior. Here, Emfuleni dug a trench to channel raw sewage into the Klip and Vaal rivers, Lubbe points out. The overflow dam is covered with a crust of rotting sewage.
“Local residents were complaining about all the sewage running across the road, so the municipality dug this channel and now it’s out of sight, out of mind,” explains Gaade. “But it’s contaminating both rivers.”
His colleague Maureen Stewart, the vice chairperson of Save, says the collapse of the wastewater treatment system in Emfuleni is evidenced by the disintegration of the pump station system and the closure of the Sebokeng wastewater treatment plant in May.
“The latter occurred because Emfuleni could not afford to continue with an expansion project outsourced to contractors. This caused a strong reaction from the community employed by the contractor, who created a lock out at the plant, which was also vandalised.”
The impact was devastating: as much as 150 million litres of raw sewage flowed into the Rietspruit and Vaal rivers daily.
“Further evidence of the collapse was the inability of the council to pay contractors to undertake maintenance of the pump stations, plus the theft of cabling and equipment at pump stations. In addition, the council was unable to pay for fuel for its own maintenance vehicles.”
The municipality, she says, received R28million from the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta) several months ago to replace and refurbish its ailing network of 44 pump stations.
“Those pumps should have been delivered long ago. We are told that they were being stored until more finance was available to fit the pumps and refurbish the instrumentation. We were also advised in July, R20m was being made available for work on the pump stations. At that point only R5m had come through,” Stewart adds.
Sewage pollution is now a common problem throughout the Vaal Triangle “no matter where you live”, as are electricity and water cuts because of the council’s debt to Eskom and Rand Water. “Even 60km below Parys people are finding dead fish,” says Gaade.
Last month, Parliament’s portfolio committee on water and sanitation described how the Sedibeng and Emfuleni municipalities were at the centre of crumbling current infrastructure contaminating the Vaal River system.
Both municipalities did not respond to the Saturday Star.
While E.coli counts have fallen in the Rietspruit - “one week they were in the millions” - remarks Stewart, levels are still non-complaint and its river bed is covered with a thick layer of black sludge.
“Considerable rehabilitation of the Rietspruit will be required and experts will be needed to determine how to get rid of the toxic sludge and, importantly, where to put such toxic sludge.”
Emfuleni’s pump stations and wastewater treatment plants are dependent on electricity. “There are no back-up generators apparently. When there is a power cut, which happens frequently, then the pumps stop and have to be reset.
“The same applies to the plants. The Rietspruit plant does not have an emergency dam to cater for the overflow, and therefore, when power is disrupted raw sewage is simply allowed to flow into the Rietspruit.”
The Sedibeng regional sewer scheme was supposed to have started in 2007/8 under the Department of Water and Sanitation, with plans for an entirely new mega-treatment works.
“Nothing happened. To date the R2billion expansion project has not got beyond technical desktop plans, which have been changed three times at great cost.”
Professor Johann Tempelhoff, of the South African Water History Archival Repository, says the anger of Save, in the case of Emfuleni, is a long standing battle on the Vaal River Barrage. It holds several high court orders against the council, the most recent being granted in February. Another lobby group, the Vaal Action Group, has been formed by residents further downstream.
“It’s disconcerting that some of the foremost water experts are urging civil society to take a more politically robust stand against local authorities who are not responsive to the outcry for addressing the problemThe problem remains the vulnerable people in the informal settlements and townships of the Vaal,” says Tempelhoff.
In Sebokeng, Mpho Khang of the New Horizon Movement, says he has lost faith in the authorities.
“Putting Emfuleni under administration was just a political ploy. There is still rubbish on the streets, there’s still no water and no electricity. Two weeks ago, the municipal fleet was taken by creditors.
“Emfuleni is a disaster area. No one can live like this. The impact of the pollution on the river is beyond a crisis. It’s the only thing we have as the Vaal Triangle that is unique to us, and it’s being destroyed.”
Stewart too, is disappointed by the apparent inaction of the authorities.
“There are few visible signs of dealing with the emergencies outlined by Save and the implementation of the national and provincial governments’ plans to restore functionality to the collapsed wastewater management system since Save’s meeting with the (Gauteng) premier’s team on July 13.
“The lack of communication since that meeting is of particular concern Save, therefore, has no option but to return to the courts.”
Chris Williams, the chairperson of the Federation of Southern African Flyfishers northern region, agrees.
“The municipalities, provincial and national governments all continue to do nothing. We were promised the moon (at the July 13 meeting) and nothing has happened since. The communities continue to wallow in raw sewage, our fish, birds, and livestock continue to die and the vegetables and livestock are affected by the state of the river water.
“The last crucial figure received was an E.coli count of 30000 when the minimum count for starting intestinal/skin disorders is 130 parts per 100ml. Various parties are accumulating medical reports on the gastrointestinal and skin disorders of the Vaal communities and also of the effect of E.coli on the farmers’ livestock and vegetables for community class actions.”
Tempelhoff adds: “If we use the recent water crisis in Cape Town, it’s evident that the political leadership was able to lead only up to a certain point. The governing DA in Cape Town started losing favour with the residents, because of higher rates and internal council struggles. Eventually the technocrats simply took over disaster-management procedures to ensure that sanity was restored.
“Perhaps it would be good to have a state of disaster declared. The funds that the government did not spend on the drought disaster in parts of the country this year, can potentially be used to help restore the health of the river health before the rainy season.”