The trickling Gonubie stream with no name is now spewing much of the suburb’s barely treated sewage into the ocean.
Information has been sparse and a request to Buffalo City Metro foundered and nothing came back.
Even local DA councillor Val Knoetze is slow to get back to me although her response indicates that action is being taken to address the issue.
But Vaughn Driessel, 50, is having none of it. He has lived here most of his life — fished and surfed these spots.
He is not prepared to accept the new normal where sewage gushes relentlessly into the fabulous Gonubie estuary and marine environment.
He took this reporter on a round trip to inspect the much-loved seaside village’s sewage pumps.
It is Sunday nearing midday and cyclogenesis — the cyclone season, with two brewing in the Mozambique channel and just beyond Madagascar — has sucked all the moisture from our skies.
It is so hot that sea grass, more a sedge, is a flat, colourless crunchy yellow.
Yet, the ocean is blue and pleasant, and this is pleasing at our first stop — the pump station at Black Rock in Ocean Way which is neutral smelling and looks in order.
Our next stop further down this BnB area is disgusting.
At the station opposite a marsh bounded by 3rd Street, 18th Avenue and Spring Road, we can see through the locked security fence that it is burbling through the cement lids.
We take a side path, stepping past the remains of a “poacher’s wetsuit” and other trash.
The picture on the beach tells the story — three or four cuts in the sand streaming with sewage.
We step onto the rocks and follow it to the sea. It is the soon-to-be-familiar colour of pale white and green which shocks as it fills an entire gully and, Driessel says, makes a clear semi-circle out in the ocean.
Further along we come to a culvert and there is that sewage stench.
Across the way are good homes, one a BnB. A long matted “gutter” runs over the rocks and into the ocean. How do people live and stroll here?
On to German Bay where we follow the usual route of the Discovery Surfers Challenge down a wide sandy path encircled with bush and some trash.
It opens out on a lovely valley vista to the ocean, except the two- to three-metre stream is gushing with that luminescent putrid pale-grey and green human effluent which is so poisonous to all life.
We pick our way around what should be the loveliest elbow in the river, except that you know that every bit of wet sand on your shoes is picking up a slick of foul bacteria.
The stream gurgles over rocks where runners in their hundreds will have to cross.
Further down, the effluent fans out in a flat delta hemmed in with a thick mat of green algae, then drops sharply to the rocks.
Earlier on the path we pass a dad and three little okies —was this where they played? We prayed not.
Two blacksmith plovers fly in and land in the septic delta. One pecks at something in the effluent.
This is normally a magnificent scene — blue ocean, frothing surf, a wide open beach framed by dunes covered in green forest with a fresh stream trickling out.
But with our poo lighting up the scene, it looks like something out of a dystopian sci-fi scene.
“When this happens, everything dies,” Driessel says.
We start a hunt for the source, and reach the entrance to the Gonubie Treatment Works where all is revealed — a huge rent in the earth with a rough sand path for big machinery leading down to a solid cemented tunnel spewing.
Above, in the sandworks, lies a large pipe and some other roll of stuff.
It looks chaotic and the road on top is carefully blocked off with BCM bollards.
The treatment works itself is locked. There is a security guard and it looks in need of grass cutting, and bits of litter lie here and there.
But, by today’s standards of disrepair and collapse, it looks passable.
But the plant is broken. And has been since August, says Driessel.
We visit the pumps on the banks of the Gonubie estuary.
A gutter which ran with sewage a few days ago is now clear and he points out some small red crabs scuttling for holes in the mud.
We check a station high up on George Randall Drive which towers over the estuary.
There is an obscure stairway down the hill — I am learning about the secret unknown places of my hometown! — and there it is, a row of lids and a brick structure.
It is clean, but I have smelt it many times on my way to swim in the river below.
The pump house at the Gonubie Marine Club is in good order.
All along the river residents are parked, braaing, fishing, hanging out in chairs, having a good time.
On my return after two hours, Knoetze is responding. She says: “German bay is horrendous and very contaminated.
“The [Gonubie] wastewater treatment works has been an issue since August last year.
“I have done regular site visits and everything that was needed is now in place, and the sediment in the bottom of the reactor reservoir is almost removed so that the works can work again.”
A blower had to be replaced and cables were vandalised and restored.
“Now just the [installation of] sand in the reactor tank, which should be completed in the next week,” she says.
“Unfortunately, German Bay and the damage done to the sea is a very heartsore affair as it can never be repaired or reversed.”
She visited the works last week and “everything is on track for a success story”.
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