Cape Town This Week: Many informal settlements are on land that is unsuitable for the installation of infrastructure for basic services (Monday 8 July 2013) Last week, I read a fascinating op-ed in the Cape Argus newspaper by Dr Allan E.F. Heydorn, a coastal ecologist and environmental consultant. His subject was the difficulty of sewage removal in high-population areas due to a number of factors, including engineering challenges amidst increasing water shortages. He wrote: ‘Flooding occurs on the Cape Flats year after year when, after heavy rains, the water table reaches the surface in low-lying areas. In such high water table areas, it is technically impossible to provide adequate road, electricity, water and piped sanitation services.’ I could not agree with Dr. Heydorn more. In recent months, we have seen a number of sanitation-related protests in the Cape Flats area with demands for the full installation of water-borne sanitation. I understand the frustration of residents who want access to a certain level of service. Providing access to basic services is a constitutional right that must be given meaning by local government. In the history of our country, not only were people often made to live in areas not of their own choosing, these areas were historically denied investment of any kind, whether through the installation of basic services or other infrastructure that helps improve the quality of life. This is the situation for many of the communities in the Cape Flats. Many of the residents living there are testament to the living legacy of Apartheid spatial planning. Some were forced to move there due to the odious policy of forced removals. Still others were given a false choice in making the decision to spend their lives there in the face of limited options. The situation of their lives is the result of a historical injustice that cannot be undone. I know what those conditions are like. My own family survived forced removals and we too were forced to abandon our homes for a life that we had to make elsewhere. Of course, the level of service delivery on the Cape Flats varies according to the level of infrastructure capacity available. Where we face lower capability for service delivery are in those areas between networks of bulk capacity on unsuitable land. Patterns of human habitation are never as rigorously defined as Apartheid planners imagined them to be. This means that where you have dense communities of people, that density will eventually exceed capacity and, when poorer people are looking for homes, they will be forced to spread out onto unoccupied land that may or may not be serviced. This is the situation we face in the Cape Flats and in other parts of the city that experience high levels of density and concomitant poverty, such as in Masiphumelele and Atlantis. And when we are confronted with these informal settlements, we are faced with the challenge of providing services where our engineering reaches its limitations and the land typology does not allow us to install the level of services we want to. Many of our informal settlements are on land that is unsuitable for human habitation, because of the risk of floods in the winter. By their very nature, flood-prone locations are in lower areas where any flooding will have aggravated environmental health detriments due to resultant sewer spillages. But the problem does not end there, because even if we could install waterborne sanitation, sewer pump stations would not be able to contain sewer spillages and such pump stations would introduce unacceptable electrical hazards, because of the electricity infrastructure required in a high-flood area. And the electricity and water stations themselves would be at risk of flooding. This flooding in turn would raise the risk of environmental hazards exponentially and would further stall the draining of sewer spillage. In addition, the sewer reticulation system will also be at risk, because of the unsuitable ground conditions associated with flood-prone areas. This will cause pipelines to sag, deflect, misalign or separate thereby adding to the blockage rate. The combined effect of this would be the frequent blockages of sewers and a spill-over at manholes which will affect the areas around which people live. In the dry season, these poor drainage conditions would prevent spillages from draining away effectively, thereby contaminating the ground water and causing environmental health hazards. And finally, much of this land occupied is private which means that we cannot invest in infrastructure there even if we could, because we are prevented from doing so by our national legislation framework, specifically the Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA). This state of affairs is not right and it is not fair. But it is what this government has to work with. When confronted with these situations, we have a range of options at our disposal. These include the use of chemical toilets for areas where densities allow trucks to move into areas to service them. Alternatively, we use container toilets where densities prevent truck mobility and the toilets need to be carried out in order to service them. And finally, we use portable flush toilets where residents’ safety is in question and where there are no sanitation facilities less than 100m from the home. These are not ideal solutions. But, in challenging circumstances, they are the very best that anyone can provide to ensure that all of our residents can lead dignified lives and have access to some form of sanitation. Our commitment to provide them is borne out by the national government’s assessment has found that we provide 100% sanitation in informal settlements and that, of the 1,3 million households without access to sanitation in the country, none are in Cape Town. In South Africa, we are confronted with the myriad legacies of our past that haunt our communities to this day. The compound effects of the structural nature of the national economy that forces people to come to cities like Cape Town in search of a better life make those legacies more keenly felt. But it is our duty to come up with innovative solutions that work with what we have and try and give real meaning to the values of our Constitution. In Cape Town, we believe in building a better future for all of our people – with every means at our disposal. wcapetown.gov.za
Posted on: Mon, 08 Jul 2013 07:27:25 +0000
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