No budget for Toti’s ‘toilet rivers’
Cleaning the rivers is not the municipality's responsibility.
There is no budget to clean and rehabilitate Toti’s rivers.
That’s the official word from eThekwini Municipality officials in reply to queries from Toti resident, Jeff van Belkum. Concerned about the declining state of the Toti River and Little Toti River, Jeff contacted the head of water and sanitation, Neil Macleod in January to request both rivers be cleaned out and restored as natural waterways.
He was referred to the manager of the pollution and environment branch, Chris Fennemore, who said he spoke to Dave Wilson, the acting manager of wastewater networks, regarding the clearing of aquatic water weeds from the rivers, but the response was there was no money in the budget to do this.
Fennemore then referred Jeff to Christo Swart of the parks and recreation department, who to date has not responded to any of the queries, even after being requested to do so by the head of his department, Dr Musa Gumede.
“After threatening to escalate the matter to City Watch and beyond, I received separate calls from a Kenneth and another from a Mr Mkhwanazi, both apparently responsible, and both promising a meeting to discuss the matter,” said Jeff.
“Following another reminder, Mr Mkhwanazi explained that a meeting had been held and plans were afoot. He said this was not actually the responsibility of eThekwini, but nevertheless they had workers on site.
He could not understand the need for a written response, but eventually agreed to do so. To date I have not received a written response to my complaint from an accountable, identifiable municipal official. It seems I am dealing with phantom officials from a phantom municipality.
The consistently putrid state of the underlying water in our rivers is confirmed by the city’s own monthly river quality reports. Apart from the visual impact, one must consider the impact on the adjacent civic, recreational and sporting complexes, used by many sportspeople, residents and visitors on a daily basis.”
One sports club that has been decimated by the degeneration of theToti River is the canoe club. “Three years ago, the club boasted 140 members,” said chairman, Mark Pontes. “Last year that dropped to about 50 and this year there are only 15 of us trying our best to keep the club ticking over.
We don’t receive any assistance from council to fight the water hyacinth. Sewage flows into the river everyday.”
The sharp decline of membership is a direct consequence of paddlers being unable to paddle on the river because of the accelerated growth of water hyacinth due to the large volume of raw sewage the municipality allows to flow into the waterways whenever pumps go down at sewage pump stations around the greater Toti area.
The Sun has been informed of the municipality’s plans to build a state-of-the-art pump station in the vicinity of Toti Squash Club, but to date no confirmation of this plan’s scope and timeline are known.
“The new plant will make a difference, but that will probably only be in two or three years. It is quite happy with flushing overspills into the waterways. The municipality doesn’t care about the problem. The city is using Toti as a big toilet.”
