A sewage leak into the Hartbeespoort Dam in the North West was being fixed and posed no danger, the Madibeng municipality said on Friday.
The extent of the pollution was being measured, but ”it is nothing to write home about”, said council spokesperson Kenneth Ngubegusha.
He said the leak was brought to the council’s attention around 3pm on Thursday. Technicians established that a pump taking water from a sewage tank to a nearby purification plant had burnt out.
This caused the tank to overflow into the dam.
Pump suppliers had closed their doors for the day by the time the council wanted to place an order on Thursday afternoon, but a replacement was on its way by noon on Friday, Ngubegusha said.
He said the sewage was ”not flooding continuously”, but during periods of peak household water use — which caused the reservoir to overflow.
Overnight, the problem was not as bad.
”By this afternoon, when people return home from work, the new pump will be in place,” Ngubegusha said.
Once the problem was fixed, the municipality and the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry would assess the damage.
Ngubegusha could not say how much sewage had leaked into the dam.
Beeld newspaper earlier quoted Hartbeespoort Water Action Group member Dirk Bouwer as saying residents had discovered a pipe dumping thousands of litres of raw sewage into the dam.
The pipe was several hundred metres from the Madibeng municipality’s water purification plant, where it sourced dam water to purify as drinking water.
”This sewage is not being dumped into the dam by accident,” Bouwer was quoted as saying. ”This is being done on purpose. The pipe was installed in such a way that the sewage overflow from a nearby pump station could be dumped into the dam.”
Hartbeespoort water scientist Karen Versveld visited the site with Bouwer, and decided to drink only bottled water in future, the newspaper said.
The Hartbeespoort Water Action Group demanded that the area where the sewage ”had probably been dumped for several months” be cordoned off and rehabilitated.
It claimed the 500 square metre site, which included a marsh, was littered with toilet paper and human faeces. – Sapa