Waste water treatment threat looms
Epidemiologist and water quality expert, Dr Jo Barnes, has challenged the contention of Water Affairs minister Buylewa Sonjica that “we have not reached crisis levels,” despite the dismal scores achieved virtually country-wide in the long awaited Green Drop report, released on Thursday April 29 by the Department of Water Affairs (DWA).
The Green Drop report lists Drakenstein Municipality (which incorporates Paarl and Wellington), and the Cape Winelands District Municipality as a whole, as having failed to or being unable to submit information for a Green Drop assessment, noting that “the Department is unable to assure the public of the confidence it has in the waste water quality managing abilities of these municipalities since all of them are classified with zero Green Drop scores”.
The report has highlighted the parlous state of the majority of the country’s waste water treatment facilities, with only Gauteng scoring over 50% (53%), and the Western Cape coming in at 47%.
Ms Sonjica is quoted in a Sunday newspaper as saying “We have reason to be concerned, but we have not reached crisis levels … If we had a crisis we would be talking about an outbreak of diseases, but we don’t want to get there. When everybody is sick in the country – then that would be a crisis”.
But Dr Barnes, who is a Somerset West resident, disagrees. “We have a severely unhealthy population for a variety of reasons. We have an uncomfortably large number of people for our developmental level suffering from hunger. We have a massive Aids infection rate and Cape Town is one of the TB capitals of the world. All of these people have compromised immune systems.”
This makes them much more susceptible to waterborne diseases, she said. “In the summer months we are drowning in what I call potentially avoidable diarrhoea cases. We’re running rehydration wards just for the severely affected children with diarrhoea and some we lose.”
Dr Barnes attributes this to, amongst other reason, failing sanitation infrastructure – which results in raw water from poorly or non-functioning waste water treatment plants being returned to surface water bodies with dangerously high pathogen levels, and many people with compromised immune system come into contact with this contaminated water.
“We are already suffering huge disease burdens from the failing sanitation, and it’s not only the (waste water treatment) works. You must add what is not in that report: the massive reticulation failures spewing sewage into blocked drains as the result of poor maintenance, and most of it ends up in surface water bodies.” Dr Barnes points out that this same water is withdrawn from these surface water bodies for purification as drinking water.
“The main source of drinking water for most municipalities are surface water bodies,” she said, “and what is downstream of us is upstream for somebody else.”
Cape Town, on the other hand, achieved a score of 82% earning it a Green Drop excellence award, with the Macassar waste water treatment plant being one of eight of the total of 23 in the City’s jurisdiction that achieved over 90%.
Turning to the submission of information by municipalities, Dr Barnes said: “As many as half the municipalities did not supply information. Some did not supply information because they do not have access to proper laboratories for determinations so that they can supply the data. Municipalities are required to conduct certain test, and we are in dire straits ensuring that those tests are done, particularly in the rural areas.”
“Many of the municipality’s laboratories, or the labs they use, are not up to par so the data are already suspect,” she said. “Many of them only do the basic test because they do not have enough money. The basic test hits the ceiling at 2400 ppm E.Coli so every test says the count is over 2400. Now that’s a low number, but in any given month it may mean 3 million (ppm E.Coli) but the municipality doesn’t know it. 2400 (ppm E.Coli) is not a good thing to have in water anyway, but an E.Coli count of hundreds of thousands or even millions presents a far greater risk for municipalities.”
Dr Barnes pointed out that with pathogen concentrations at these levels being returned to surface water bodies, pathogens will inevitably find their way into the food chain because water from these sources is used for irrigation.
“Waterborne pathogens will find their way into our food chain on both vegetables and to a lesser extent, fruits. Vegetables grown in or close to the ground (or washed in contaminated water) are the biggest bridge for pathogens from water into the food chain,” she said. “It takes longer than the shelf life of fresh produce for the pathogens to die and to achieve sanitary safety.” She also said that livestock which drink water from contaminated sources can develop diarrhoea, especially young animals. This affects the condition of the animals and also forms a bridge to the human food chain.
And if our local fresh produce is affected because of irrigation with contaminated water, it is inevitable that produce for export produced using water from the same sources, could be at risk.
“It is cynical in the extreme and not only disingenuous, but counter-productive (for the Minister) to say that we don’t have a crisis and that we’ll only have a crisis when everybody (Dr Barnes emphasis) gets ill,” said Dr Barnes. “It reflects for me a lack of political commitment and will to admit the problem and to face up to it.”
“We cannot afford for the country to be totally down and out (as far as water quality is concerned) before government admits there is a problem and does something about it,” she concluded.
* Dr Jo Barnes is a senior lecturer in epidemiology at the University of Stellenbosch and an acknowledge expert in water quality matters in the context of community health. (***I thought that these criteria might appear in a sidebar on page 3, rather than listing them in the main body of the story.)
Green Drop Report Card Criteria
The seven criteria listed below, each of which has three or four weighted requirements, are assessed to arrive at a percentage score for each of the waste water treatment facilities assessed. These are then aggregated for municipalities, provinces and finally the whole country.Of the 852 municipal waste water systems in the country, only 449 (53%) were assessed.
- Adequacy of process control, maintenance and management skill
- Efficiency of waste water quality monitoring programme
- Credibility of drinking water sample analysis
- Regular submission of waste water quality results to DWA
- Waste water compliance with license conditions/general authorizations or special limits
- Waste water quality failure response management
- Waste water treatment works capacity
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