Sewage pumped into Rooikuilspruit

THABAZIMBI – Anybody using the Deena Street bridge over the Rooikuilspruit would have noticed the foul smell coming from the murky water below during the past week or more. Those living and working in the vicinity would have had to put up with that horrible odor constantly.
According to the municipality a sewage pipe behind Petronella Flats in Deena Street became blocked by tree roots. This resulted in the contents of the sewage system spilling onto the empty municipal ground behind the Petronella Flats covering a huge portion of this, as well as the parking lot of the Petronella Flats, in raw sewage.
By Tuesday, 23 February, about a week after the problem emerged, the municipality dug a trench from the sewage overflow area to the Rooikuilspruit, draining the raw sewage into this sensitive eco-system. As precaution the area was covered with disinfectant. As the flow in Rooikuilspruit depends on rain and no big downpour occurred, the sewage remained in the spruit. If there should have been a big downpour to cause the Rooikuilspruit to come down, all this raw sewage would have flown down a healthy eco-system, polluting another healthy system, the Crocodile River.
According to Corneluis Booysen, Technical Services Manager, the vegetation in the Rooikuilspruit aggravates the problem of removing the sewage, as it hampers the flow of the water. He hopes to include in the proposed budget, a project of lining the watercourse with concrete between Hamerkop Street and the Technical building.
This is the type of project, however, which often gets moved down on the list of priorities and remains “a project for the future”. Since the rehabilitation of the Rooikuilspruit would benefit the whole community the time is ripe for the community to get involved through, schools and green peace institutions by protesting against instances like this, with the threat of cholera hanging over our heads, where raw sewage ends up in our fresh water systems.