The “ refurbishment ” of the existing sewerage plant in Louis Trichardt is in progress.

“The overall progress is that the refurbishment has reached 40% completion at this stage,” Makhado Municipality’s Director of Technical Services, Mr Thivho Ralulimi, said on July 9.

It is common knowledge that the sewerage works had reached a stage of dysfunction and created a potential health hazard, where raw sewerage runs in the veldt past the plant and passes close to boreholes where drinking water is obtained from. The sewerage plant was originally designed to handle 7.5 megalitres of effluent per day. Due to failure to replace or maintain the equipment at the plant through the years, the plant has not been functional. Furthermore, the effluent the plant daily has to cope with has increased to an estimated 12 megalitres, nearly double the capacity it was designed for.

The service provider, Belta Services, was given the tender to refurbish or replace the bio-filter and the feed pump station, to put in new mechanical equipment for the primary sedimentation tanks, and to clean the anaerobic digestors. They also have to refurbish or replace the valves and the electric works and refurbish the sludge pump station and the bio-filter recycle pump station. New screening and grit removal equipment, new chlorination equipment or a new chlorination system, and new mechanical equipment for the humus tank must be installed.

The refurbishment of the existing sewerage works will cost R11.5 million and the commencement date was February 1 this year. “The completion date is September 3 of this year, if all goes well,” Ralulimi said.

To cope with the roughly 12-megalitre effluent generated per day, a new sewerage plant is planned adjacent to the existing one, on its western side.

“The new sewerage plant is in its design stage. We should finalise the designs by August this year and the tender processes should run from August onwards. We feel that the commencement date in terms of construction may be the end of November and it would be a contract of almost 12 months,” said Ralulimi and asked that the amount of the estimated cost not be disclosed.