A political party has sounded an alarm over the City of Cape Town’s practice of discharging sewage into the ocean, warning of severe consequences for public health and marine ecosystems. The concerns center on the city’s use of marine outfall pipes, including one at the Green Point Sewage Station, to pump waste into the sea.
ActionSA has accused the City of failing to properly treat the sewage before its release. According to a party spokesperson, the current process involves only passing the waste through a 3mm screen, which they claim is demonstrably insufficient.
“When people have gone out there, including our own people, to those sewage islands… there is flotsam there that very clearly has gone through a 3mm screen that shouldn’t have. There are sanitary pads, tampons, used condoms. Those things are all getting through,” the ActionSA spokesperson stated.
The party argues that true treatment involves more than just screening. “Treatment involves chemically adding substances that take out the worst toxins in that sewage. And that is not taking place,” the spokesperson said. “That is the thing that is allowing the untreated raw sewage to go out all the time and creating the real damage.”
In response, a City of Cape Town spokesperson defended the process, confirming that while the sewage is not chemically treated, it is screened before being pumped via the marine outfalls.
“What is coming out from the marine outfall is highly diluted, highly diluted sewage. It’s not wrong to say that the sewage through the marine outfall is not treated, but it is certainly screened and there is no way that any solids are making its way through there,” the City spokesperson said.
The City suggested that solid waste found near the coast may originate from other sources. “You will notice a number of storm water outfalls and it’s not unusual for some of this to make its way through the storm water outfall or for ships, unfortunately far out, to dump some of its waste at the ocean which then sadly, because of current, makes its way to the beach.”
Despite defending the current system, the City confirmed it is developing long-term plans to upgrade all of its wastewater treatment plants and sewage stations.
ActionSA has rejected the City’s explanations and is calling for urgent action to find alternative methods for managing sewage, moving away from ocean discharge. The party maintains that the current practice poses an ongoing and unacceptable risk to both the environment and public health.