The Democratic Alliance (DA) has reported Sol Plaatje municipality and CoGHSTA to the Green Scorpions, following the ongoing disposal of raw sewage into an open canal in Floors, Kimberley.
Four mobile toilets, placed within the nearby community, are highly inadequate to service the 150 informal homes on site. Emptying of their tanks is being neglected by the municipality.
As a result of the ongoing lack of sanitation services in the 13-year-old settlement, residents rely largely on the use of makeshift bucket toilets, which they empty straight into the stormwater canal in Recreation Road. One resident, who resorted to erecting a flush toilet, laid his own underground pipe to discharge the effluent directly into the canal.
The situation poses a direct health and safety risk to the community, of which the closest informal homes are situated less than five meters from the canal. It also poses a further threat to downstream communities like Mint Village.
The contaminated canal water bypasses the Homevale Waste Water Treatment Plant and flows into Kamfers Dam, the once world-renowned home to the southern hemisphere’s lesser flamingo population. This is a double blow to the dam, already contaminated by untreated sewage from the dysfunctional sewerage plant.
Floors residents are tired of ongoing neglect and empty promises by Sol Plaatje municipality to address service delivery shortcomings. These include not only ongoing sanitation issues but also the delayed completion of electrical infrastructure connections, which was due to be completed in December last year.
Residents deserve solutions, not more finger pointing between Sol Plaatje and CoGHSTA as to who is responsible for bulk sanitation services to formalized informal settlements versus who is responsible for the installation of sanitation reticulation to households.
Ongoing failure to address sanitation issues presents a hazard to the entire Kimberley area.
The investigation by the Green Scorpions should not only deal directly with the immediate contamination of the environment, but also urgently enforce the implementation of sustainable mitigating measures by local and provincial government, to address longstanding sanitation failures in Floors.