Just as the waters for the Blue Drop report have been calmed, a Green Drop report has surfaced, released by the Department of Water Affairs (DWA), indicating a score of 7% for Makana Municipality. The report looks at the efficiency of the municipal waste water (WW) treatment works.
Just as the waters for the Blue Drop report have been calmed, a Green Drop report has surfaced, released by the Department of Water Affairs (DWA), indicating a score of 7% for Makana Municipality. The report looks at the efficiency of the municipal waste water (WW) treatment works.
WW is reportedly the first barrier in a multi-barrier system of ensuring safe drinking water quality and is important for downstream water users and the river’s ecosystem.
It is also used to facilitate a more transparent way to indicate the level of confidence the DWA has in WW quality management as well as promoting incentive-based regulation and acknowledgement of excellence in waste water quality management.
Of the 449 assessed, 203 scored more than 50% against the stringent criteria. Makana Municipality’s waste water treatment systems scored an average of 7%, the lowest in the Eastern Cape.
The report stated that the WW quality management performance of the Makana Local Municipality, as a whole, is poor.
“Substantial improvement is required in all areas of WW management” it reads. The municipality scored G ratings for six out of seven of the performance areas such as Regular Submission of WW Quality Results to DWA and WW Failures Response Management. Only the Credibility of Waste Water Sample Analysis was awarded a B rating.
Environmental Biotechnology Research Unit (EBRU) water engineer at Rhodes, Dave Render believes that
the 7% does not indicate a lack of plant performance, but merely a lack of management performance.
“The works on Belmont Valley are pretty well run, where everything is functional,” he said. Safety, Health and Environmental Officer at Rhodes University, Nikki Köhly said that it was extremely important to have efficient WW treatment works.
She said that if we are pushing water containing sewage, it will ultimately lower the quality of water downstream, in turn affecting river life.
Chairman of the Kowie Catchment Campaign Dr Jim Cambray, agreed with Köhly that good WW management is important as it threatens the ecosystem and influences people who depend on our river systems.
“We have Belmont Valley and the agriculture along the river. “They deserve good quality water that they irrigate onto the vegetables we eat.”
He said that it was important for the municipality to publish the water quality results for the regular testing that – by law – they are required to do.
He added that the extremely poor ratings of the Blue and Green Drops should have been prevented and “hopefully now with Amatola Water involvement we will succeed in obtaining good scores”.
Cambray has been studying an endangered fish, the Eastern Cape Rocky, which lives in the Kowie River, for a number of years.
“I have seen the enrichment of the river causing both algal blooms and allowing alien invasive water plants to rapidly proliferate in the river which resulted in lowering the population of this rare fish species.”
He said that the river’s ecosystem is challenged with excessive water removal and the extra stress of poorly treated WW adds to the problems.
Makana Municipality spokesperson, Thandy Matebese said that they have a problem with how the report for the municipality was assessed as they were not aware when the visits were made to the plants and when the assessments took place in order to compile the report. “We will try and secure a meeting with the provincial head of DWAF,” said Matebese.
