The Emfuleni municipality’s waste water treatment system is an ongoing serious health risk and is causing severe pollution of the Vaal river and its tributaries between Vereeniging and the Vaal Barrage, said Save the Vaal Environment (SAVE).

In response to the Water and Sanitation Portfolio Committee’s welcoming of the progress by the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) in the municipality of Emfuleni, the organisation said that it hopes the portfolio committee will visit the Vaal soon to see how little progress has been made in resolving the sewage pollution crisis since their last visit earlier this year.

In a statement on August 24, the committee noted that good progress had been made in Emfuleni local municipality to repair key and critical pump stations and rising mains to make them compliant with their effluent discharge licence conditions.

While much work has been done over the last few months, the committee said there was a need for another physical visit to the areas to ascertain the veracity of the improvements that the DWS reported.

SAVE explained in a responding statement that the sewage crisis has been escalating over the past 12 years and reached crisis proportions in 2018. Today, sewage pollution remains at the same level with running streams of raw sewage in the streets of Emfuleni from Vereeniging to Sebokeng, including Bophelong and Vanderbijl Park.

This sewage finds its way into the Vaal river impacting communities below the Barrage that draw water for domestic use from the river.

SAVE further noted that there are excessive E.Coli counts in the Vaal, which is an environmental issue and a major contributing factor to the pre-Covid economic recession and unemployment in the area.

Following the deployment of the South African National Defence Force Engineering Corps, government-owned wastewater treatment specialist Erwat was contracted to effect repairs to the system. This contract ended on June 28 and was not renewed.

While some 25 km of the 1 600 km network system was unblocked, tons of rubbish removed and a number of manholes repaired, there is not yet progress on repairs to the pump stations and treatment plants.

The Sebokeng treatment plant has not treated wastewater since it was vandalised in May 2018 and work on a new module to treat 50 Ml of sewage has been constantly interrupted by community protests, while the Rietspruit treatment plant is working at 30% of its capacity to treat 40 Ml of waste water daily.

The third plant, Leeukuil, is operating under capacity because it is dependent on a working pump station system to receive waste water. This situation is ongoing with no end in sight. There are no dates for starting the repairs, let alone completion dates, SAVE stated.

The group said it appears that the DWS decided to take over the tender process to appoint contractors for these refurbishments. However, the tenders, which amount to some R750-million, have not yet been advertised.

SAVE obtained a High Court order against the Emfuleni local municipality in February 2018. However, the municipality is technically bankrupt and under partial administration. The municipality’s water and sanitation department does not have the resources to undertake its normal operations, maintenance and emergency repairs. The latter occur virtually on a daily basis.

In May 2019, SAVE returned to the High Court and obtained a ‘joinder’ to join the Ministers of Water and Sanitation and of Environmental Affairs, the Premier of Gauteng and responsible Gauteng MECs to the Emfuleni order. In October 2019, SAVE agreed to the request of the Gauteng team to suspend the order for six months to give Erwat time to demonstrate progress.

SAVE now has no other alternative but to proceed with this litigation.