KNYSNA NEWS - The Minister of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries and the provincial government have been asked to take steps to prevent the continuation of sewage leaks across Knysna.

This week, sewerage manholes overflowed in parts of the town, with a manhole at an ablution block on the Knysna High School sport fields, alongside Trotter Street, releasing sewage into a trench leading to a concrete stormwater channel close to Waterfront Drive.

The sewage in the trench flowed strongly into the channel, which runs directly to the Knysna Estuary.

In Waterfront Drive, alongside the estuary, sewerage manholes overflowed in the vicinity of the Knysna Waterfront last week, and at the intersection of Long Street and Gordon Street, a sinkhole has caused a sewerage pipe to break, and contractors were extracting sewage from the site into tanks, and, according to Peter Bester, the councillor for ward 10, transferring it to a nearby sewerage manhole.

'Build-ups in sewer network'

He said the broken sewerage pipe was probably causing build-ups in the surrounding sewer network, leading to other sewerage manholes overflowing.

Sewage leaks in the town were the result of a failure to clear sewer lines, Bester said.

"The infrastructure department staff need to clean the (sewer) lines because a layer of fat and grime has built up in lines, which is restricting flow," he said.

Bester, whose ward encompasses parts of the town centre, Upper Central and Upper Old Place, said he had "escalated this problem (overflowing sewerage manholes across the town) to the provincial government and the Minister of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries, Dion George".

On 22 August, the Knysna-Plett Herald reported on a series of sewage leaks in Knysna. In Upper Old Place, sewage from an overflowing sewerage manhole entered a rivulet that flows beneath Old Toll Road, alongside Bokmakierie Street, then under the N2, and ultimately ends up flowing under George Rex Drive and into the estuary.

A sewage rivulet, formed by an overflowing sewerage manhole at the garden waste dump site in Upper Old Place, flowed down a slope in the direction of the estuary.The overflowing sewerage manhole on the Knysna High School sport fields, alongside Trotter Street.

The municipality cleared blocked sewerage manholes in Nelson Street in the town centre, after an outcry by roadside fruit and vegetable traders, whose produce was being splashed with sewage as vehicles drove by.

'(Sewage) will run down streets'

"I warned the council and the municipal manager (at a 2023/24 meeting to vote on the budget) that quite literally, 'the s..t is going to run down the streets,'" Bester said.

"At the 2024/25 budget meeting, I repeated the same thing ... (and told the council at the 2023/24 meeting that) one of the main problems of the budget is that they (Knysna council) haven't allocated sufficient money to deal with the sewerage system in Knysna."

SANParks, which manages the Knysna Estuary, was in August asked to provide the results of the then most recent E.coli tests undertaken in the estuary to the Knysna-Plett Herald, and to date they have not done so.

The Knysna municipality has been asked to comment on the overflowing sewerage manholes, and the Western Cape government and Dion George's office on Bester's escalation of the problem to them, and when their responses are received, they will be published.

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