Nahoon Estuary Management Forum
Buffalo City Municipality is in the process of buying land adjacent to the Nompumelelo Township to assist with the area's informal settlement overflow.
This, was after the Nahoon Estuary Management Forum succeeded in its court case against BCM regarding the sewage spills from the congested township into the Nahoon River.
Municipal spokesperson Samnkelo Ngwenya confirmed that the Nompumulel Township is primarily built on informal municipal land which is also on sewer pipelines.
He says they have put out a call to service providers for "township establishments within the municipality including the Nompumelelo Township" via a tender process.
"Unfortunately, we can't speak a lot on the actual tender itself, except to say that this call is a response to some of the challenges that are being faced within that township. There are areas of overflow," he said.
Meanwhile, Christo Theart the chairperson of the Nahoon Estuary Management Forum, says they are extremely glad about the move as it is a major problem contributing to the poor water quality.
"If we can solve Nompumulelo we can solve 60-80 percent of the problem," he said.
Theart says there are other areas, like Torquay Road, where spillages also end up in the Nahoon Estuary.
"As far as we can gather an engineering consultant was appointed to find a solution for that specific problem. So, we are glad about that and looking forward to that matter being finalised," Theart said.
In April the East London High Court ordered Buffalo City to put measures in place so that sewerage spills from Nompumelelo do not enter the streams on both sides of Nompumelelo that drain into the Estuary.
The court also ordered BCM to implement a maintenance plan for sewerage infrastructure at Nompumelelo, employ a Social Facilitator to provide advocacy training to residents with regard to waterborne sanitation, and ordered that illegal shacks built over the main interceptor sewer were not finalised.
