Umdloti stormwater upgrade on track

The Umdloti’s Sweet Water stream and circle upgrade project which began in July to cope with future stormwater run-off from surrounding property developments, is making good progress.

With a run-off capacity of 85 cubic metres per second, Ethekwini Municipality’s senior manager of stormwater and design, Greg Williams, said the new culvert will be able to handle significantly more water than what came gushing down during the catastrophic April 2022 floods when, according to municipal records, 250.8 millimetres of rain fell in a 24-hour period.

The closed concrete culvert will span 265 metres in length and will run underground from the sea to the Kaitaia residential complex entrance across the road from Umdloti Kwikspar.

At the seaside end, the culvert will be three metres high and five metres wide, narrowing to 2.1 metres high and 2.4 metres wide where it crosses the top end of the circle, making it easily accessible to a Bobcat should the need arise.

This is a drastic improvement from the old culvert that could barely accommodate a wheelbarrow.

Upon observing the dynamic movement of beach sand, Williams said they revised the design, further increasing the depth of the culvert to ensure that in the event of severe silting there would always be an air pocket at the ceiling to allow natural scouring to take place.

Lacking this feature, the old culvert had become completely blocked up with sand.

In addition, Williams said the concrete culvert will isolate the wastewater treatment works above the circle from run-off water, preventing it from being blocked up by silt again, as well as reinforce and protect the only road into and out of the village from being scoured away as has been the case before.

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The project is expected to be completed by April next year, after which the area above the culvert will be covered with paving to create a large pedestrian area with benches and landscaping, rather than additional parking spaces.

According the Umdltoi Smart Village’s Tracey Simkiss, this is to uphold the reputation and appeal of Umdloti that is founded on a strong environmental ethos and low key “recreational” lifestyle of the village where pedestrians have precedence over vehicles.

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