Note to Editors: Attached please find soundbites in English and Afrikaans by Leanne De Jager MPL
Tshwane residents and tourists are being cautioned about using the Marais Dam picnic site in the Rietvlei Nature Reserve facilities due to worsening pollution. This situation did not happen overnight, and the DA Gauteng has been warning about rising pollution at the picnic site. This is once again putting the health and well-being of Tshwane residents at risk.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) calls on the Gauteng MEC for Environment, Ewan Botha to compel Tshwane and Ekurhuleni to agree to a binding, time-bound remediation plan for the Hartebeesfontein Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP). We further demand that Ekurhuleni Water Care Company (ERWAT) publish a clear timeline and technical plan to end the biological overload driving this pollution, as raised with them in March this year.
If pollution is not brought under control in the area, residents are at risk of developing severe respiratory illnesses. In addition, the current situation affects not only residents but also the natural flora and fauna in the nature reserve and the local bird population.
This site is a tourist attraction, and if visitors and residents cannot see the natural ecosystem due to pollution, the number of visitors to the nature reserve will decrease. New research by water expert Dr Michael van der Laan has found phosphorus levels at Marais Dam of 5.1mg/L. This is around five times the legal discharge limit and twenty times the threshold associated with severe algae blooms.
Every sampling site in and around the reserve exceeded the legal limit, with pollution already present before the Riet River even enters the reserve and worsening downstream.
The City of Tshwane’s claim that pollution comes from outside its jurisdiction is simply inadequate. The DA Gauteng demands that the city immediately engage with the City of Ekurhuleni.
This is not a new situation, and the DA Gauteng has been warning about the looming pollution crisis for months.
In March, the DA’s Mayoral Candidate for Tshwane, Cilliers Brink, visited the point where the Hartebeesfontein WWTP in Ekurhuleni discharges effluent into the Rietvlei River and raised the biological overload at that plant directly with ERWAT.
In April, following the Green Drop Report, the DA Gauteng warned that this decline was not a performance dip but a public health and environmental catastrophe resulting from years of neglect across the metro’s failing treatment works. Those warnings have now materialised into a closed picnic site, a fenced-off dam, and a nature reserve in decline.
Residents, wildlife, and biodiversity do not care whose jurisdiction the pollution crosses; they need it stopped. A DA-led Tshwane would immediately meet with its counterpart in Ekurhuleni to put a plan in place to curb the ongoing pollution affecting the Rietvlei Dam.