Only four of the Buffalo City Metro’s 15 wastewater treatment work plants are fully operational, with many of the plants vandalised and out of service.
The municipality has also confirmed that just three of the plants have valid water use licences, while the remainder have expired.
Eight plants, scattered across the metro’s jurisdiction, are reportedly partially operational, after some of their components were vandalised.
This is stifling development in many areas across the city, with mooted projects in the Qonce and Bhisho areas having stalled since 2008, according to BCM officials.
Proposed but stalled developments include plans to build a private hospital, shopping malls, low-cost housing units and government offices.
The city’s wastewater treatment works include the Berlin, Bhisho, Breidbach, Central in Scenery Park, Dimbaza, East Bank, West Bank, Kaysers Beach, Kidd’s Beach, Mdantsane, Potsdam, Quinera, Reeston, Schornville and Zwelitsha plants.
BCM spokesperson Bongani Fuzile confirmed the only fully operational plants were the East Bank plant in Nahoon, Quinera in Gonubie and the oxidation ponds at Kidd’s Beach and Kaysers Beach.
A leaked confidential metro report indicated the city's two “partially operational” plants were those at East London’s West Bank and the old one in Zwelitsha.
Of the metro’s 96 pump stations in the vandalised plants, 27 are non-operational. The vandalism includes cable theft.
“It is true the municipality has been unable to approve development to the Qonce and Bhisho areas since 2008, due to limitations in wastewater treatment capacity in these areas,” Fuzile said.
“Development proposals have included BnBs, shopping malls, private hospitals, low-cost housing and government offices.
“Similarly, the municipality has been unable to approve private housing extensions.
“However, with the planned completion of the upgrade of the Zwelitsha plant and the diversion of the Schornville plant to Zwelitsha in the next 18 months, parts of Qonce will be unlocked for development.
“There is currently no funding for diversion of the Bhisho and Breidbach oxidation ponds, so the municipality will still be unable to approve development in these areas.”
The metro confirmed recently it would need an additional R1.2bn to bring the new Zwelitsha plant on line.
The funds would be used to complete diversions from the Bhisho, Breidbach and Schornville plants to the new plant, on which the city has already spent almost R400m.
But the plant remains a white elephant, having been vandalised, and is non-operational.
The Dispatch visited some of BCM’s plants last week.
Of these, the East Bank plant was operational when visited, with its 29 pump stations properly secured.
However, the Central plant near Scenery Park appeared neglected, with insufficient fencing. A child drowned at the facility recently while swimming with friends in the flooded, filthy separation ponds.
Parents in the area are now calling for the demolition of the plant, saying it “not only poses risks for our children, but raises health concerns for all of us nearby”.
All six of its pump stations were covered with a thick blanket of algae, while some infrastructure and buildings surrounding the stations were in ruins.
Many of the city’s facilities have been derelict for years.
The woeful state of the Hood Point plant in West Bank has been heavily criticised since 2014 and in 2022 it was reported there were fears that sewage-contaminated fish were being caught and sold for consumption.
Despite commitments by BCM to clean up the plant, for years a steady stream of stinking effluent has run out of the facility’s driveway, across the road and into the sea.
The West Bank plant pumps “treated” effluent into the ocean, but major leaks cause excrement to bubble out of the ground.
A concerned resident said: “Everything that could possibly come down a toilet is running onto the beach and into the sea — sanitary pads, nappies, toilet paper and plastics.”
Another resident said this posed a serious environmental challenge.
Eastern Cape environmental affairs spokesperson Ncedo Lisani said “no specific instances” of sewage spills in the metro had been reported.
He refused to respond to further questions, saying the department of water and sanitation was the “lead authority overseeing wastewater treatment plants, including water use licences”.
The provincial water and sanitation department’s director for regulations, Andrew Lucas, said having so many non-operational plants in BCM led to sewage spills in communities and the city’s waterways.
Lucas said plants without valid licences were operating unlawfully.
Fuzile said: “Water-use licences remain valid for a maximum period of 20 years ... The municipality is currently embarked in the application process ...
“Right now, the municipality is preparing to conduct the public consultation process. Now the municipality is monitored on the basis of the old licences and measures its compliance on that basis.”
The Kidd’s Beach Ratepayers and Residents’ Association claims the metro is unable to provide evidence that it ever tried to licence the area’s wastewater treatment facility, which processes more than four times its capacity.
In 2017 and 2018, the water and sanitation department issued directives to the metro to fix the problems there, after an inspection revealed the site illegally discharged effluent into the Mcantsi river.
In 2024, the city advertised tenders to rehabilitate the plant and the site in Quinera but this process appears to have stalled.
Centre for Local Community Rights chair Christo Theart said BCM had run the plant without authority since 2004, when its legal exemption from the national department expired.
BCM officials previously told the Dispatch that “the Hood Point screening station is a formalised and permitted raw sewage marine discharge point”.
At the time, the city said the municipality had an exemption from the water and sanitation department to operate the screening station, and had applied to environmental affairs for a coastal water discharge permit in January 2014 but was still waiting.
Calcamite Sanitation and Wastewater Solutions chief operations officer Sebasti Badenhorst said “water pollution from sewage is serious, with deadly consequences”.
“Sewage and water pollution have a direct link to life-threatening diseases such as cholera, typhoid, dysentery and hepatitis.”
Border-Kei Chamber of Business infrastructure committee chair Annemarie Fish said BCM was breaking the law.
“Non-operational plants come with massive health risks for the communities and the environment, and if children get to swim in water contaminated with sewage, they can get all sorts of diseases ... you are putting the lives of the entire metro community at serious risk,” Fish said.
DA chief whip Anathi Majeke said on Friday the situation was “completely unacceptable”.
“Systemic failure in governance, financial management and basic maintenance is what’s truly causing the environmental damage to our rivers and beaches.
“Pollution is killing wildlife, destroying natural habitats and posing a risk to human health ... The local economy is also suffering, with negative impacts on tourism and fisheries.”
Daily Dispatch
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