Saturday 26 February will be Weeding Day in Rosebank as residents, along with the University of Cape Town, the Water Hub and Friends of the Liesbeek (FoL) come together to tackle a section of the Liesbeek that runs through their suburb.
This will be but one step in the Rosebank Canal Rehabilitation Project aimed at bringing back nature to this section of the canal. Launched in January this year by Future Water (UCT), the Water Hub and the Friends, the project is funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Nick Fordyce, chair of FoL, says they are delighted to have embarked on this project with UCT’s Future Water Institute and the Kingdom of the Netherlands in South Africa.
“Collaborative, innovative, restorative and ambitious projects like these are at the heart of what the FoL aim to achieve. We’re proud to be working on this project which will add to the ecological resilience of the Liesbeek, while simultaneously inspiring others to take up similar approaches for other waterways,” he adds.
Rosebank and Mowbray residents were introduced to the project last week during an information session held at the Liesbeek near the play park in Rosebank on Friday 11 February. More than 70 residents attended the session.
According to information shared on FoL’s website, the canalised part of the Liesbeek, which makes up nearly 70%, offers limited ecological services by way of improving water quality or supporting habitat and ecosystems.
Fordyce says about 10 years ago, they entered into a verbal agreement with the City to ensure they didn’t dredge the canals.
“The intention of this was to then allow sand, stones and vegetation to establish, in order to bring back some river ecology into the canal. So we intentionally let weeds and so on accumulate,” he explains.
Now these weeds in this section will be removed and replaced with riverine plants.
So far, over 1 500 Palmiet seedlings have been brought to the Water Hub, a research and demonstration site in Franschhoek, and transferred onto floating wetland structures where they are grown hydroponically. After 10 weeks, the plants will be ready to be transferred to the Liesbeek canal.
Project leader Kevin Winter says the project team is looking forward to the next phase of the work involving weeding and planting that will be done together with the residents.
“This project is about turning a canal into a river and bringing nature back into the city,” Winter says.
This pilot project will also form part of a research project. From mid-February, three Dutch students of Hogeschool Rotterdam will come to Cape Town to start their research on the Liesbeek Canal.
