Urban water bodies and their use Grahamstown has a number of small dams mostly built in the 19th century as the original water supply for the town.
Urban water bodies and their use Grahamstown has a number of small dams mostly built in the 19th century as the original water supply for the town.
Best known, and the largest of these, is Grey Dam behind the caravan park and the N2 bypass on the west side of town. It is well patronised at weekends by swimmers, hikers, fishermen, people who enjoy braaing and, of course, the notorious mid-winter plunge!
Not as well known are the nearby Douglas Reservoir, just below the Monument, and Hamilton Dam, near the old quarry. On the north side of town adjacent to the Cradock Road is the aptly-named Cradock Dam. This small dam is often dry or nearly so, and rarely spills.
The old railway line runs over the dam-wall. In Somerset Heights, between Selworthy and Wincanton roads, is Gowie’s Dam, once a great schoolboy haunt for avid fishermen, now sadly neglected. Over the years, small water bodies such as these can easily fall into disrepair, become overgrown with weeds, and end up as refuge for vagrants and criminals.
Some 15 years ago, Grey Dam was becoming an undesirable place to visit, so a campaign was launched to clean up the area, build braai spots, install waste bins and make it a safe area for families to spend leisure time. The dam was even treated with rotenone fish toxin in an attempt to remove alien fish, and substitute them with the Eastern Cape Rocky, a small, threatened local species.
This was unsuccessful, and large quantities of indigenous mullets were inadvertently eliminated instead. Gowie’s Dam is due for a ‘makeover’ but the debate is: what form should this take? Undoubtedly the surrounds of the dam need to be attractive enough to encourage visitors to spend leisure time there and they need to feel safe. Small dams in urban areas attract fishermen–mostly, but not always, school age boys.
This healthy outdoor activity gets youngsters away from computer screens, and into an environment where an appreciation for birds, fish, insects, plants and the natural world has a chance to develop. Time spent fishing, often has less to do with what is actually caught, and more to do with the experience of being ‘outdoors’. We spend so much of our modern-day lives glued to a computer screen indoors that anything that provides a healthy alternative is worth doing! If there are fish to be caught, the experience is enriched, and what harm is there in ‘little boys catching fish’?
The question is, therefore, what can urban dams offer fishermen in the Eastern Cape?
Unfortunately the answer is very little. Indigenous angling species are few and far between in this part of the world, almost everything worth catching is either exotic (from another country) or trans-located (from other parts of South Africa) and in conservation terms, therefore, undesirable. However urban dams are far from being suitable sanctuaries for indigenous fish species.
They are artificial environments and the catchments in urban areas are inevitably degraded to some degree from the pristine natural environment. The Bloukrans/Kowie River catchment area, which most of the Grahamstown basin falls in, is already home to introduced exotic angling fish like bass from North America.
What harm can this species do in such small water bodies, bearing in mind that they do well there and provide a much-loved recreational resource? If we remove them, what will replace them? Nothing, as in Grey Dam? How do we then guarantee that other less desirable fish like carp, which muddy the water, or catfish which are predatory, are not then introduced?
Let the debate begin!
Waainek Wind Energy Farm The construction of the Waainek Wind Farm on the outskirts of Grahamstown started earlier this month. The project company Waainek Wind Power, led by InnoWind, was awarded the tender in May 2012 by the Department of Energy under the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Programme (REIPPP).
The project consists of 8 wind turbines with a total installed capacity of 24,6 MW. The annual electricity production will be comparable to the consumption of 16,000 South African households (approximately 64,000 inhabitants). The works started with the clearing of all endangered plants from the construction area and the removal of topsoil for the construction of roads towards all wind turbines.
Foundation works will start in September and will involve approximately 360 cubic meters of concrete and 40 tons of reinforcing steel. The main wind turbine components are expected to arrive on site in the second quarter of next year. The installation of the wind turbines is expected shortly thereafter.
The first turbine is expected to be operational and start feeding electricity into the Makana municipal grid from August next year.
Find us Online: www.grocotts.co.za/environews Contacts for Makana Enviro-News: Nikki Köhly: n.kohly@ru.ac.za, 046 603 7205 | Jenny Gon: j-gon@intekom.co.za, 046 622 5822 | Trisha Nathoo: nathootrisha83@gmail.com, 078 584 9496 | Nick James: nickjames@intekom.co.za, 082 575 9781 | Philip Machanick: p.machanick@ru.ac.za, 046 603 8635 | Strato Copteros: strato@iafrica.com, 082 785 6403
