Following an oversight visit to the Mahatma Gandhi Pump Station by Democratic Alliance caucus leadership and Members of Parliament on 10 November, the party will be taking legal action.
On Monday, the party said in a press statement that despite both national and provincial contravention directives being issued, “eThekwini Municipality continues to pollute and destroy the Durban harbour with sewer overflows”. “Video evidence provided by concerned harbour users and residents has shown a river of raw sewage flowing into water near the Yacht Marina. The harbour sewage saga is not new or unexpected. The eThekwini Municipality hamstrung itself when it originally de-commissioned a perfectly functional pump station to make way for a proposed hotel on the Point Waterfront, which later never materialised. Now the city suffers with an underground facility which is prone to malfunction and needs frequent maintenance,” said DA MP, Heinz de Boer.
He said the visit on Wednesday revealed that sulphur fumes are attacking fittings and electrical components due to the underground nature of the facility and that the pumps are not sewage pumps, instead, they are water pumps which are prone to blockage and breakdown when encountering rags and other debris. “We also found that the current pumps are also non-submersible and therefore highly susceptible to damage when the pump station floods. The destruction of the harbour and subsequent environmental damage is not an unforeseen circumstance and the DA believes the eThekwini city manager may have a criminal or civil case to answer for.”
He added that the DA is now fully engaged in obtaining legal opinion in this regard. “We will continue to monitor this unacceptable situation and report back to the public on any further action taken,” de Boer concluded.
EThekwini Municipality spokesperson, Msawakhe Mayisela, said: “The DA is within its rights to institute legal action against the City. However, please note that the City will never derive any pleasure from polluting the harbour and the environment. This was a situation that was beyond our control. The breakdown of most of our pumps is a result of vandalism and unrelenting loadshedding.
Moving from one loading stage to the next occurred haphazardly, leaving us with a very small room to shut down some of the stations to avoid them discharging raw sewage into the port. This is regretted and the city has processes that are currently underway to look into procuring back-up generators to over 200 pump stations. A decision has been taken to exclude some pump stations from loadshedding. The city is grateful that it has since weathered the storm.”
