Cape Town - The City of Cape Town has bowed to Forestry, Fisheries and Environment Minister Barbara Creecy’s ruling in favour of a repeat of the public participation process in the long-running matter of pumping raw sewage into the ocean on the Atlantic Seaboard.
On Tuesday, Creecy decided on an appeal lodged by political parties and activists against the office of the chief director of integrated coastal management, which originally granted coastal water discharge permits to the City eight years ago.
Creecy said the public participation process conducted by the City in applying for a permit to discharge sewage into the ocean at Camps Bay, Green Point and Hout Bay was “inadequate, outdated and should be redone”.
The appeal had been lodged by ActionSA, CapeXit (Cape Independence Party), voluntary non-profit organisation the National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI) and two activists, Stefan Smit and Tracy Satt.
Cape Town City Council mayoral committee (Mayco) member for water and sanitation, Zahid Badroodien, said the City welcomed the opportunity to repeat the process and had already briefed consultants to undertake the public comment process.
Badroodien said: “The City has further commissioned a study that will determine the feasibility and costing of various higher level pre-treatment interventions at the outfalls.
“The draft scoping report for this study is anticipated to be complete by June 30, and further community engagements are planned for later this year.”
Badroodien, however, argued that the City had followed procedures. He said it had placed an advert in community newspapers, inviting public comment from June 1 to July 10, 2015, in line with the Integrated Coastal Management Act.
He said: “As a result of full compliance, the permit for Hout Bay was successfully issued in 2019, while the permits for Green Point and Camps Bay followed in 2022.”
In March, Camps Bay and Green Point residents held a “Bays of Sewage” meeting at which they said they had reached the end of their tether over the City’s continued denial of the dangers of pumping raw sewage into the ocean through its marine outflows.
At that meeting, the City was lambasted for its years of “denialism” when presented with learned experiences and scientific analysis of the impacts on environmental and human health caused by its practice.
Welcoming Creecy’s appeal decision, ActionSA Western Cape provincial chairperson Michelle Wasserman said: “ActionSA asserted, from the start, that the process followed by the City was flawed.”
Wasserman said the party had fought to stop the City because of evidence that the raw sewage returned to the bays and beaches through tides and wind action, which presented a clear risk to public health.
“The raw sewage released into the Table Mountain National Park Marine Protected Area, which is detrimental to marine life, is totally unlawful and a clear violation of the right to a healthy environment,” Wasserman said.
