Blue Flag beach scheme 'like apartheid'

eThekwini municipal manager Michael Sutcliffe has likened the international Blue Flag scheme to an “apartheid” system that creates separate beaches, the Mercury newspaper reported on Friday.

“The Blue Flag team have, through their actions, created two categories of beaches, much like apartheid having black and white beaches. The majority of people here don’t go to the Blue Flag beaches,” Sutcliffe said at a briefing with the Durban Chamber of Commerce and Industry on Thursday.

He was speaking on the controversy over sewage-related pollution on the Durban beachfront.

However, Andre Greef of the chamber’s beachfront committee challenged this assertion, saying there were no racial restrictions limiting access to Blue Flag beaches.

He said the main issue was the perception that Durban was “not good enough” to comply with international standards.

Sutcliffe also refused to make a presentation on the Blue Flag controversy unless members of the media and opposition party councillors were ejected from the briefing.

Blue Flags are part of an international beach-quality accreditation scheme.

Four beaches in Durban were once rated world class, but they have lost their Blue Flag status, reportedly as a result of poor water and sand quality.

According to the Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa, the organisation overseeing Blue Flag compliance in South Africa, tests on some beaches have shown levels of faeces in the water to be unacceptably high by both World Health Organisation and national standards.

Blue Flag national coordinator Wessa’s Alison Kelly told the Mail & Guardian in March this year that flags were lowered largely because of water-quality issues at the beaches: “To date, E coli levels fall within accepted limits. However, the levels of faecal enterococcus/streptococcus in sea water along the Durban coastline are the cause for concern.”

Kelly also pointed out that while status withdrawal from beaches, including Bronze, South and Bay of Plenty, was largely due to water-quality issues, other beaches, such as Addington and North, had also been penalised because of “poor cleanliness of the beach and facilities”.