South Africa's rolling power blackouts have forced the City of Cape Town to invest heavily in generators for pump stations to prevent the recent sewage spills -- that barred thousands of sun worshippers to bath at various beaches -- from rearing its stinky backside ever again.
In a desperate bid to mitigate these spills marring coastal areas during load shedding, the City of Cape Town ordered eight new generators this week.
This follows widespread spills during the festive season that led to closures at city beaches, with the City blaming increased power cuts and its impact on pump stations.
Currently, 101 of the City’s 487 sewage pump stations requiring generation are fully rigged out with generators.
It’s costing ratepayers around R150 000 on a monthly basis to run these generators – depending on the fluctuating diesel cost and Eskom’s capricious power network.
“As a means to mitigate the impact of load shedding, permanent generators have been fitted at all wastewater treatment plants,” said the City’s acting Mayoral Committee Member for Water and Sanitation, Siseko Mbandezi.
The Mother City currently has 26 wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) and 17 water treatment plants (WTP).
All WWTPs already have permanent generators.
“When it comes to larger priority sewage pump stations, we fitted them with permanent generators as a measure to increase the resilience of sanitation supply systems,” said Mbandezi, adding that maintenance staff are on standby and that they will use contingency measures such as mobile pumps and trucks to reduce overflows
“However, with higher, prolonged stages of load shedding being experienced, sewage spills and overflows are to be expected, despite the contingency measures that are in place. In such instances, operational teams do their utmost to contain and clean up such flows,” he said.
“Cape Town has further installed early-warning telemetric alarm systems at all 487 sewage pump stations to help detect faults.”
In the next financial year, the City will earmark R400 million for pump stations.
Of this R400m, R100m will go to generators and electrical maintenance to protect against load shedding, screens to protect against foreign items in sewers, and security measures to combat ongoing theft and vandalism of critical infrastructure.
This, while the remaining estimated R300m is related to upgrades and refurbishment of pump stations, including major upgrades to high-priority large pump stations.
The City previously wrote to Eskom asking for an exemption for the Faure WTP. This request was declined.
Eskom’s outgoing CEO, André de Ruyter told Weekend Argus that they had good reason to reject its application.
“There are a lot of customers who present a very good case to be exempted from load shedding but it’s important to note that there’s a national standard that prescribes how load shedding should be implemented,” said De Ruyter.
“Load shedding is implemented according to the standard on a rotational basis between consumers of electricity in South Africa who are dependent on Eskom but then it is implemented on a non-discriminatory basis and any exemption from that is by extreme exception only,” he said.
“For example during the Covid-19 pandemic when there was a lot of requirement for medical oxygen. There was then an agreement to exempt oxygen plants from any load shedding, so there are exemption provisions but they are really far and few between the way the national standard is implied.”
In the meantime, the Mother City plans to expand its aquatic fleet to all the main water bodies, a move which will ensure that each reserve will be littered with harvesters and boats rather than muck.
The new weed harvester for Zandvlei Estuary Nature Reserve is being manufactured locally and is expected to be delivered before Christmas.
These specially designed machines remove aquatic biomass – pond weed or algae – an attempt to improve water quality.
“My vision for Cape Town is to see the condition of our wetlands improve across the board over time,” said the chairperson for the City’s mayoral advisory committee on water quality in wetlands and waterways, Alex Lansdowne.
“This means we need to protect and restore our poorest condition wetlands to a moderate condition and improve the health of our moderate condition wetlands to good and very good condition,” said Lansdowne.
“In many areas we have excellent water quality and in others, like Milnerton Lagoon, we have lost the trust of the community and the challenges seem overwhelming,” he said.
In other areas, Lansdowne said, they have wetlands like Zandvlei which are “well managed and clean”.
“I’ve seen for myself that healthy waterways add value to property, encourage economic activities, and are buzzing with cultural and recreational activity.”
Lansdowne added: “To get there there is a lot of money that needs to be spent and a new approach taken towards water governance. However, we are addressing these decades-long issues through the mayoral priority programme on inland water quality and sanitation.”
Weekend Argus.