Pennington family in the poo…quite literally!

SPARE a thought for Pennington’s Vosloo family. Every time about 600 homeowners in the area flush their loos, the stinking waste often ends up at the bottom of their garden.

“It’s definitely not nice,” said  Marie Vosloo. “Put it this way… we will never invite people to dinner.”

While national headlines recently screamed  about an irate student dousing a bust of Cecil John Rhodes with poo at the University of Cape Town, Pennington people have had to put up with a the same problem for more than five years.

A bad smell has been hanging over Dolphin Drive pump station since before 2010 and there is still no light at the end of the sewerage pipe.

This time it’s not political (one hopes), but it is a sorry tale of incompetence, financial mismanagement and frustration which has featured on numerous occasions in the Mid South Coast Mail over the years.

To recap:

• The pump station was declared hopelessly inadequate to cope with waste from most homes in Pennington – including the retirement village and Selborne;
• After various complications around environment and encroachment were ironed out, a contractor was appointed to do the work;
• Alas, the contract was terminated due to poor work;
• The job was retendered and the new contractors found that the original groundwork was totally inadequate. They needed to dig down further to avoid the collapse of the R102 running alongside. Back to square one;
• Work continued in 2014 and progress was good until October last year. Suddenly, Ugu had no more money and contractors weren’t being paid;
• Sources allege that a few smaller contractors were ‘ruined’ in the process;
• Now, Ugu District Municipality has apparently declared a dispute with the main contractor and an adjudicator is to be appointed. (Neither Ugu Municipal Manager DD Naidoo nor his communications department were available for comment at the time of writing.)

In the interim, Pennington is still virtually cut in half by a giant, stinking pond in Dolphin Drive, alongside the pump station. Ironically, this is keeping the nearby R102 from collapsing.

The Pennington Ratepayers’ and Residents’ Association members are at their wits’ end. They are calling it a ‘crisis’, yet their latest impassioned pleas to Ugu are going unanswered.

Mr Hilten estimated that even if work started again tomorrow, it would take another two years to build an adequate pump station.

“All we can do is appeal to Ugu to maintain what they’ve got as best they can.”

And he also appealed to residents to check that their stormwater did not flow into the sewerage system as this made the situation even worse. Sewage then flowing into the Nkomba wetlands and stream, into the lagoon and finally into the sea at a Blue Flag beach. Mrs Vosloo would also be eternally grateful.

When it rains, the family is often trapped. They can’t slip and slide out of their driveway… even with the car’s windows closed.