Transparency – it’s one of clean water’s most noticeable elements, and something the government has been pushed to emulate, especially when it comes to data.
Following stern nudges from activists and citizens, the City of Cape Town has announced some changes to how we can all understand the City’s water quality and its developments.
Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis recently made two important announcements regarding the aforementioned. The first decreed a formation of a new advisory committee (previously known as the Water Resilience Committee), and the second related to data transparency toward water quality.
The new advisory committee – The Water Quality in Wetlands and Waterways Advisory Committee, which was approved by Council recently, will bridge the gap between government and the public by uniting water industry experts, city councillors, community activists and interested residents, according to the announcement.
The water quality data transparency will utilise a publicly accessible Open Data Portal, which can be found here. It will stem from the City’s Laboratory Information Management System.
“Cape Town has a dedicated community of water activists and experts. Some of them have worked on these issues tirelessly for years. Our government sees these activists as partners and friends in the essential work of cleaning up our waterways. They are not enemies or people to be shut out of our plans. Cleaning up our waterways will be monumentally difficult, and our best chance of success is in working together in strong, and accountable relationships,” Hill-Lewis said.
The new committee will recommend strategies for combatting water pollution and look out for long-term protection and restoration of Cape Town’s waterscape inclined to vleis, wetlands and waterways. They will report to the Mayoral Committee twice a year.
Water is a City’s life force, and these steps indicate a more accountable way for locals to up our standard of living as well as achieve goals in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of ‘Clean Water and Sanitation’ for the UN decade.
As Dr Kevin Winter of UCT’s Future Water Institute once critiqued, the UN Decade goal by 2030 looks like a bleak prospect and is on the road to being missed ” because we are not collecting relevant data to track our progress.”
“In the past, the perception has been that the City is unwilling to share information around water quality because it is not readily accessible to the public, with the infrequency of analysis of Portfolio Committee reports not being sufficiently useful either,” Hill-Lewis noted of data inaccessibility.
“This has created a scenario where stakeholders source data through other means about the quality of various water bodies in and around the City, and have had no means to compare independent data with the city’s data. The Open Data Portal seeks to meaningfully address this shortcoming,” he added.
What will the committee do?
As per the Mayor’s announcement, the committee must:
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Communicate with the relevant Protected Area Advisory Committees,
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Host workshops with interested persons and groups,
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Encourage and facilitate strategic partnerships with organisations and stakeholders,
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Encourage the development of Catchment Management Plans for priority catchments,
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Explore solutions and make recommendations related to catchment drainage and sewage outfalls where it affects Coastal Water Quality.
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The committee members will be required to carry out research and inspections related to its activities.
Of committee members, Mayor Hill-Lewis will serve as its Chairperson, Cllr Alex Lansdowne (botanist and conservationist) will lead its functioning. Alderman Eddie Andrews Mayco member for Spatial Planning and Environment alongside Macyo Member for Water and Sanitation Zahid Badrooiden and Councillor Maryam Manuel will serve as committee members from the City of Cape Town.
Other members include professors conservation specialists and aquatic ecologists, of which Dr Kevin Winter is part.
Systemic plan
There is a systematic plan in place focused on investigating the quality of our waterways. These consist of 1,910km of rivers and streams and 4,164 natural and semi-natural wetlands, including vleis and estuaries, according to the announcement.
Beyond inland water testing, Cape Town’s seascape is also important. Regular coastal water testing is also a part of the package. The City reports on coastal water quality and its data twice a month. This information is accessible by the City’s website under ‘Coastalwaterquality.’
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