As work on sewer pipe replacement steadily progresses in Tokai, Wynberg residents will have to wait a few months longer with the City of Cape Town planning to head to that neck of the woods in the 2023/24 financial year.
On Wednesday 15 February, Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis visited a sewer pipe replacement project in Gugulethu to mark the milestone of the City completing its 26th kilometre of pipe replacement upgrades this year alone. Considering that the City only replaced 25 km of pipe last year, they can be allowed for taking the win – one that has been long in the coming.
As part of a major sewer pipe focus, the City aims to see 100 km being replaced every year. Over the next three years, R755 million will go towards achieving exactly that. At present, active pipe replacement projects are underway in Gugulethu, Scottsdene, Epping, Bellville, Dennedal, Sweet Valley, Strand, Maitland, Uitsig and Tokai.
According to the City, a total of 14 518 m of sewer pipes will be replaced over three projects that are now taking place in Tokai. These projects started in August last year and are scheduled to be completed in April, if all goes as planned.
The City says the work in Tokai was done as “a pro-active area replacement due to the age of the system”.
“The work includes cleaning and lining the pipes, as well as removing roots where necessary, when they damage the pipes. Manholes will also be repaired and reconstructed where identified,” the City shared with People’s Post last week.
It is no secret that Cape Town’s wastewater infrastructure is old and has not been regularly upgraded to meet the needs of a rapidly increasing urban population. This has resulted in widespread sewer overflows or spills in the past few years with some media platforms even calling it a sewage pollution crisis.
A widely held misbelief is that a sewer pipe can burst. The City says the City’s sewer system is largely not pressurised, and therefore, it cannot burst.
“Sewer overflows or spills occur due to various reasons. The most frequent are blockages due to foreign objects in the sewers (litter, rocks, wood, towels). If there’s a blockage, the sewer needs to be unblocked and cleaned, not replaced. Sewer collapses become replacement projects. Some sewer overflows and spills are due to the strain of prolonged ongoing load shedding that affects pump stations’ operations and foreign objects that block pipes and damage the pump stations,” the City says.
As reports of sewage spills have increased across the city, so has the number of communities clamouring to be first in line for pipe replacement.
The City says the selection of projects is done based on a number of considerations.
“We have a city-wide Pipe Assessment Plan (PAP) which highlights, and prioritises the areas, projects and individual sewer pipes whose condition needs to be assessed for possible replacement.”
Secondly, age also plays an important role.
“The material design life of a sewer is 50 years,after which it deteriorates rapidly to a degree where the pipe material becomes brittle and it cannot sustain the load on top of the pipe anymore and it collapses.”
Lastly, City depots identify and check sewers that need to be replaced based on their on-site experience when dealing with the community, blockages and collapses.
According to Hill-Lewis, pipe replacement is part of a strategy to bring down sewer spills over time, including major bulk sewer upgrades, proactive cleaning of sewer lines, resourcing of sewer spill response teams, and digital telemetry systems for early warnings on sewer spills.
“These interventions have led to a 30% downward trend in reported spills over the last two years based on preliminary data. Our forthcoming Reactive Incident Management System (RIMA) will help us track progress even more closely by digitising the coordination of sewer spill responsiveness,’ says Hill-Lewis.
Report blocked sewers, pump station failures, vandalism to the sewage reticulation infrastructure and sewage overflows using one of the following channels (provide the street address, and get a reference number):
WhatsApp 060 018 1505; www.capetown.gov.za/servicerequests; email water@capetown.gov.za; SMS 31373 (maximum 160 characters. Standard rates apply), call 0860 103 089 or visit a City walk-in centre (see www.capetown.gov.za/facilities to find the one closest to you).
