Breaking News: Thaba Chweu Local Municipality (TCLM) to have first day in court for non-compliancy of Environmental Act

The cases of alleged violation of the National Environmental Management Act (NEMA) of 2008 the Scorpions are investigating against TCLM, will be heard in the Lydenburg Circuit Court on Monday April 11.

 

A community member who was asked to testify, said, “I am so relieved we are at this stage. We want the TCLM management to be held criminally accountable for polluting the rivers and making residents sick with substandard water.”

 

 

 

DA councillors had started opening criminal cases against TCLM in 2020 at the Lydenburg Police Station. 

 

The investigations were taken over by the Green and Blue Scorpions in 2021 for further investigation.

 

The Scorpions are the environmental management inspector of the criminal investigations section of Mpumalanga Environmental Affairs and the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS). 

 

They were not at liberty to comment during their site inspection in 2021, but were shocked by the amount of evidence and water samples they were able to compile.

 

The Scorpions visited the water treatment plant in 2021 with a DA delegation, and said other evidence of environmental hazards were found in the Dorps and Spekboom rivers.

 

Other sights of concern were the sewage flowing into the Marambane River behind Mashishing. 

There it formed a small river from the Marambane Pump Station directly into the river.

 

 

These are all areas where human waste directly flows into river systems.

 

Steelburger/Lydenburg News had accompanied the DA councillors on site visits in November 2000 and twice in 2001.

 

Spiros Couvaras, Gravette Herbst (since retired), Sonja Boshoff (DA member of parliament) and Comfort Sibiya made sure that the delegation visited the Extension 2 waterworks as well as other areas, including Spekboom.

 

The Extension 2 residents refer to the water treatment plant as the town’s “sewage dam”.

 

In 2020, Couvaras started the ball rolling at the Lydenburg landfill site. 

The wind was carrying off the smoke created by air pollution. This was also one of the Environmental Act cases that will be brought forward during the court case.

 

Just before the elections in 2021, a DA candidate, George Viljoen, had the newspaper view the human excrement bubbling out of a manhole in Kellysville.

 

The excrement flowed downhill into the Spekboom River. He also accompanied the paper on a site visit to Riverview Primary School with Couvaras. Sewage was seen flowing into the Spekboom River, next to the school entrance.

 

TCLM has been making some progress in Extension 2 to address some of these issues.

 

Contractor after contractor were appointed, but seemingly either went bankrupt or were not awarded any tenders again.

 

 

In recent months, TCLM has been able to repair the pump station and a contractor is currently on-site, after several tender disputes over the years.

 

However, earlier last week, sewage was seen bubbling out of a manhole again and flowing towards traffic.