With winter approaching, the City’s Water and Sanitation Directorate has been busy preparing its infrastructure and systems for the rainy season, which typically brings more stormwater into its networks.
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The City’s Water and Sanitation teams have been working proactively throughout the year to implement maintenance programmes, increasing their efforts as the winter approaches to ensure that its networks of sewer pipes, pump stations, and river systems are ready for rain.
‘Helping to reduce sewer overflows and ensuring that the City’s sewer and river systems can manage the volume of rain in addition to the usual day-to-day operations and flow remains key priorities as we approach winter.’
‘Another benefit of the river maintenance programme in particular is that it helps assist with improving the water quality in our rivers.’
‘City teams will continue to monitor its operations and infrastructure where possible even throughout winter and will deploy teams to reported incidents where needed. In the meantime, extensive work has been done across Cape Town in various areas and these efforts will continue,’ said the City’s mayoral committee member for water and sanitation, Zahid Badroodien.
The City’s Water and Sanitation Directorate continuously maintains a 10 000km sewer network, which includes pipes, drains, and pump stations that transport sewage from properties to wastewater treatment facilities throughout Cape Town.
Its river system assets are extensive, including canals, rivers, culverted (closed) rivers and tributaries, ponds (within the flood plain/river corridor), riverine wetlands, vleis, and stormwater dams.
Proactive work includes cleaning litter traps/booms, ponds, canals, and culverts and monitoring them for additional cleaning as needed to avoid blockages that could cause flooding. Cleaning methods vary depending on the site, such as removing vegetation (including invasive water plants), silt, and litter, as well as dredging, which uses excavators and bulldozers to remove accumulated sediments/silt deposits.
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Work has already begun in areas such as the Khayelitsha Wetlands, which are part of the Kuils River, the Vygeboom Dam in Durbanville, Gordons Bay Natural Streams, Hout Bay Sections A and C, and the Prinskasteel River in Constantia.
Work is currently underway in areas such as Geelslot in Somerset West, Bottelary River in Kuils River, Dirkie Uys Canals and Upper Golf Course Dam in Durbanville, Diep River Section C, Sand River in Marina Da Gama (Muizenberg), and Black River along the M5 Highway.
Human behaviour is responsible for approximately 80% of sewer overflows, with items such as rags, feminine hygiene products, builders’ rubble, litter, fats and oils, and even cutlery being illegally dumped into the network via toilets, sinks, and manholes. The city has even removed a television and auto parts from our sewer lines. These waste items should not be in the sewer network, but when they do, sewers overflow into our streets.
‘During winter, this kind of behaviour contributes to overflows. Generally, the sewer system is already dealing with foreign items that are flushed, poured down sinks and drains which cause blockages and overflows which could be avoided. During heavy rain, overflows increase because of illegal dumping of debris, sand, rubble, etc that also wash into the sewer network system, via open manholes where covers have been stolen or damaged. Coupled with this, more rainwater enters via these open manholes and from illegal stormwater-to-sewer cross-connections on your properties, where water is channelled from roofs, gutters, and paved or hard yard surface areas into sewer drains. All these factors contribute to blockages or reduce the capacity of the pipes to convey wastewater, and damage infrastructure like pump stations, resulting in overflows and flooding.’
‘In gearing up for winter, the team has ramped up its efforts to proactively maintain and clear blockages caused by foreign items that should not be in the network, with a focus on hotspot areas such as Bishop Lavis, Philippi, Gugulethu and Khayelitsha. These hotspot areas are identified based on the highest volume of sewer-related service requests received during the previous winter season.’
‘The proactive work is done to mitigate the possibility of sewer overflows due to stormwater ingress. The rainy season presents an increased risk of stormwater infiltrating sewer systems. By proactively cleaning the sewer systems, the likelihood of the network becoming overwhelmed and experiencing overflows is reduced.’
‘We urge residents in Cape Town to play their part by reducing the amount of water entering of sewer network, especially during the peak rainy months and to be mindful of what is being flushed, poured down drains and sinks and how they dispose of their waste. Let’s work together to ensure our sewer network functions efficiently which will greatly assist in reducing overflows on our streets this winter,’ said Badroodien.
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Picture: City of Cape Town
