The Chairperson’s Association (CA) in Louis Trichardt has urged residents to take note of the proposed location of the town’s planned new waste water treatment works.

According to Mr André Naudé, chairman of the CA, the proposed new site may have a devastating effect on the town’s current aquifer if the waste water treatment works are not run professionally.

In a letter dated February 8 to Tekplan, the consultants responsible for the completion of an environmental impact assessment (EIA) with regard to the new treatment works, Naudé raised several concerns regarding the location of the new site along the Madombidza road. The letter served as comment on the EIA report.

In the letter Naudé, asked Tekplan, amongst others things, if the new treatment plant will be big enough to cope with the town’s waste water. The new treatment works is planned, at first, to handle 5 megalitres per day, but can later be extended to handle 10 megalitres per day. At present, Naudé says, the town’s existing treatment works already have to cope with 7.4 mega litres of waste water per day, which excludes the amount of raw sewerage spilling into, amongst others, the wetland near Eltivillas and the town’s industrial area. The worst of it all, Naudé states, is that Tekplan’s report admits that “no flow records are available” and therefore he questions the accuracy of Tekplan’s EIA report.

Naudé also expresses concern in the letter that it seems as if the proposed waste water treatment works will be built above the aquifer which is at present supplying water to parts of Louis Trichardt through municipal boreholes.

“Effluent from the sewage works has been identified as a potential pollution source … It is of the utmost importance that the water source is not polluted,” the letter states. In this regard, Naudé once again refers to the EIA report, which states: “New (future) facilities at the sewerage works should be designed to prevent pollution of the aquifer.” Whether or not pollution will be prevented is, however, debatable especially when one looks at the municipality’s track record in this regard. The same report also states: “…no monitoring of the ground water has occurred and the real impacts are therefore not known.” The report goes on to say that as no monitoring has occurred in the past it is strongly advised that a proper management and monitoring programme be implemented to ensure that the groundwater resources are not polluted.

“As it seems as if management and monitoring are not being done, there seems to be little hope that it will be done when the new plant is operational. This is not taken into account in the study. Lack of management and monitoring should be taken into account when the location of the proposed plant is investigated,” Naudé states.

The CA’s letter also raised concern over that fact that the pipeline from Tshikota has already been completed without an impact study and without the final approval of the proposed waste water treatment works.

“It seems as if the EIA is only a rubber stamp and that concerns from the community will not be taken seriously,” Naudé states.