Sanity has prevailed on Blue Flag issue

It really is excellent news that eThekwini has applied for another three Pilot Blue Flag beaches.
The three new beaches are all ones that used to be full Blue Flag, until Dr Sutcliffe withdrew the city from the accreditation scheme.
Sanity has prevailed, and the provincial government has instructed coastal municipalities to participate in Blue Flag beaches marketing.  Fortunately, with the full backing of councillors from all political parties, there was a desire to rejoin the scheme.
What the city has done is to apply for those beaches, where we do have a reasonable chance of satisfying the strict criteria laid down by Blue Flag.  The three new Pilot Blue Flag applications are Anstey’s, Umhlanga Main and Westbrook Beach.
The four existing pilot Blue Flag beaches are to complete another year under pilot status. This is probably because we don’t have a full year’s worth of water quality readings, and may fall below the pass mark.  These beaches are Umgababa, Ushaka, and two at Umdloti.
The seven beaches cover eThekwini from south to central to north, so (hopefully) the public will have a Blue Flag beach within easy reach along our 98 kms of coast-line. The Blue Flag rules are strict, and a municipality can only have pilot status for two years.  This means that eThekwini will have to apply for the original four to be full Blue Flag next year.  It would make sense to apply for all seven beaches together, which will put our tourist city back to where we should be.
It still riles me that our city was the first to join the Blue Flag beaches accreditation scheme in 2002, and has now fallen behind Cape Town – where it is too cold to even swim!
GEOFF PULLAN
Westbrook