News24.com | METRO MELTDOWN | Durban's sewer network on verge of collapse, municipality has no money for maintenance

Engineers have warned if urgent maintenance and refurbishment was not carried out urgently, the city's sanitation infrastructure would collapse.

Engineers at the eThekwini Municipality have raised the alarm about the poor state of the city's sewer infrastructure, arguing should maintenance not be done urgently, the system faces a "high risk" of collapsing completely. 

READ: METRO MELTDOWN | eThekwini bleeds cash as workers claim R3.6bn in overtime pay in five years

The engineers have warned if urgent maintenance and refurbishment was not carried out urgently, the city's sanitation infrastructure would collapse, resulting in environmental and public health disasters.

The grave warnings are contained in an internal audit of the city's sanitation infrastructure, a memorandum to the City's executive committee by officials in the sanitation department and a report by the Department of Water and Sanitation.  

Warning of collapse of sanitation infrastructure

The audit report, published in the middle of last year, said "the situation within sanitation operations department is dire and requires immediate attention from the highest spheres failing which it can only result in complete collapse of all sanitation infrastructure in the short term".

The report stated: 

The report to the City's executive committee, authored a year ago, revealed in recent years, eThekwini had not had capital investment on its ageing sewer infrastructure.

"The city has not had any major capital investments on the sewer infrastructure to address aging and dilapidated infrastructure and these include sewer pipe replacement programmes, rehabilitation and upgrading of pump stations, hydraulic and functional capacity upgrades on wastewater treatment works." 

The city's sewer infrastructure was in desperate need of refurbishment and replacement, said the report, adding due to the lack of capital and maintenance budgets, officials have adopted the run-to-failure approach - fixing and maintaining infrastructure when it has failed and stopped working. 

The report showed in the short term - 0 to three years - officials would need R2.6 billion for emergency maintenance and refurbishment of sewer and wastewater infrastructure.

In the medium term - 0 to five years - authorities need R1.2 billion while in the long term - 0 to 10 years - the council will need R4 billion.

No capital budget for the emergency projects

But officials said the City did not have the money it needed for emergency upgrades and long-term sewer capital projects.

"There is currently no capital budget for the emergency projects listed in appendix A and therefore this report is for noting by the executive committee of these projects and the urgent need for additional capital and operating budgets in the current and upcoming financial years."  

All three reports paint a picture of a dramatic decline in sewer infrastructure maintenance over the past five years.

The Department of Water and Sanitation's report said:

"Effluent compliance at wastewater treatment plants have deteriorated to poor status and urgent intervention is required by treatment works to optimise their operations and maintenance." 

There was a general absence of asset management resulting in widespread equipment failure and infrastructure deterioration, said the report.

This shows there has been a significant reduction in faecal sludge processing at wastewater treatment plants.

In February, March and April 2015, eThekwini's wastewater treatment plants treated 1 294, 1 485 and 1 632 tonnes of faecal sludge, respectively. Fast forward to 2021, only 15 tonnes was processed in February. No faecal sludge was processed in March and April 2021. No sludge was processed at all last year.

"The lack of maintenance, frequent breakdowns and lack of redundancy in sludge treatment equipment has led to significant loss of sludge treatment capacity. Sludge treatment equipment is often very old and requires replacement/refurbishment."