Cape Town - The stench of sewage hung over Delft yesterday as the City powered up its Winter Readiness programme in the area.
Work is already under way to jetclean 200km of sewers ahead of winter in hopes of mitigating or preventing seasonal Cape Town flooding risks.
With more than 190km of the sewer pipeline already completed, it has been the largest sewer cleaning project undertaken by the City. Previously, only 100km of the sewer pipeline was cleaned ahead of winter.
Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis and water and sanitation Mayco member Zahid Badroodien joined the teams cleaning sewers yesterday morning.
“We want to reduce the seasonal flooding risks in areas around the City, particularly in informal settlements and poorer communities that often struggle with localised flooding, by being ahead of winter and cleaning blocked sewer and stormwater drains and pipes,” Hill-Lewis said.
Last year, the City had less flooding than usual because of this kind of proactive cleaning measure being done before winter arrived, and this year it hoped to further reduce this.
Pierre Maritz, the City’s reticulation manager, said: “Preventative sewer cleaning assists in dealing with future blockages; it ensures we get flow-through, although we are also dealing with the issues of ingress at stormwater drains, especially illegal storm water connections that increases the flow.
“The other challenge we have is illegal dumping in our sewer systems – even bricks and other things not fit for the sewers are dumped.”
Hill-Lewis said stormwaters often led to the overflowing of sewers during extreme winter weather in Cape Town, and increased the risk of localised flooding where there were blockages in the system.
Badroodien added: “The City attended to around 7 100 sewer blockages, taking December 2022 as an example month. Of these, 5 100 (72%) were foreign objects and litter, with a further 910 (13%) due to fats from cooking.”
Anthony van Rooyen, a senior worker in Delft’s sewer department, said he was held up at gunpoint last week Monday at approximately 7pm.
Van Rooyen was with another worker, sitting in the back of a truck, when two men came past.
One man jumped in the car with them, saw Van Rooyen’s phone and demanded it be handed over while holding a gun to his side.
Van Rooyen said this was just one instance of the danger they faced as City officials in an area which also had one of the highest crime rates in the province.
