Dear Cape
Town
Here
we go again. Having proved conclusively that a web of nets erected to keep the
sand in place over an old rubbish dump has been a hopeless failure the Council
is putting up even more of them. The dump, closed more than 30 years ago, is in
the middle of a 19 ha site that consists of mainly sand dunes.
The Council is repeating what it has done at the beginning
of every year since 2016. Only this time an even larger section of the dunes
next to the Witsands surfing beach not far from Cape Point is being covered
with these rows of nets.
Officials seem unconcerned that they’ll soon get flattened
or buried in the sand by the gale force winds that are endemic to the area.
In its efforts to ensure that none of the remaining rubbish
(plastic and other non biodegradable material) gets washed into the sea during
the winter rainy season, which happened many years ago, the Council has spent
something like R7-million in the last 12 years.
Even though we are in the midst of the worse drought anybody
can remember the Council upped its wasteful spending on the site from 2016
onwards, blowing about double the R500 000 average that had been
splurged in previous years.
The waste of money gets worse and worse.
It just goes on and on. My efforts over a period of more than two years to get
the Mayor Patricia de Lille to put a stop to this have proved fruitless.
On 26 June 2017 I lodge a complaint about this with the
office of the Public Protector and I got an acknowledgement a few days later.
It said that my complaint would be “assessed to establish whether the law
allows us to investigate your complaint. As soon as the process is complete we
shall revert to you and advise you accordingly.”
I have yet to be “advised accordingly” although I was asked
to provide further proof of my allegations in addition to what I gave in my
original evidence. I then sent links to my various posts on the subject as well
as photographs etc.
But if Advocate Busisiwe Mkhwebane the Public Protector
keeps complaining that she hasn’t got enough money to investigate the big
crooks properly what is the chance of my complaint ever being finalised?
This
never ending waste is particularly galling at a time when the Council has
drastically increased the price of water as it badly needs money because of the
crippling draught. In addition it is proposing massive hikes, some as high as
26%, on all services charges for ratepayers. These are way above the inflation
rate.
On
the other side of the mountain from Witsands there are 40 000 people
living in the Black township of Masiphumelele who are crying out for improved
living conditions while this waste goes on and on.
When the netting began all over again in 2018 I tried to
find out what the Council intended to spend on the site this year. At the start
of my investigating in 2016 I dealt with Councillor Johan van der Merwe, who had
the Environment portfolio.
My
questions to him evidently became too hot when I asked how the tenders for the
work had been allocated. That was when I was told I would not be given any
further information.
It is ironic that the Councillor in charge of Environment
when the waste of money at Witsands really escalated is now the Mayoral
Committee Member for Finance who recently made a speech introducing the The Greater Cape Town Water Fund Pilot
Project.
This year Van der Merwe told me that Councillor Brett
Herron the Mayoral Committee Member for Transport and Urban Development was now
in charge of Environment. He in turn passed me onto Gregg Oelofse the Manager:
Coastal Management.
He wanted me to meet him on the site but he had to cancel
our appointment because his elderly mother in Durban
Obviously he could not have anticipated this but I was
mystified as to what he could have told me on the site that he could not have
put in an email. How much the Council plans to spend at Witsands this year is
surely not a secret.
A couple of days ago workmen were busy digging out buried
nets along the sea front where virtually all the original ones had disappeared.
They were rolling them up and carrying them away. And when I asked if they
would be re-erected I was told that they had rotted.
This makes nonsense of the assurance that I was given in
2016 that buried nets would be dug out and put up again. So that’s another
aspect of how wasteful this netting scheme is.
The pictures below are glaring examples of what a wasteful failure the netting has been ........
The pictures below are glaring examples of what a wasteful failure the netting has been ........
 |
| Nets being re-erected on 2018.01.17 with what's left of the previous ones in the foreground |
 |
| Five days later on 2018.01.22 what's left of of the nets at the same place as the above scene after a gale |
Diary of
Cape Town City Council’s huge waste of money in a futile attempt to keep the
sand in place at the Witsands rubbish dump site which was closed more than 30
years ago.
(This is a sample of the
wasteful expenditure on parts of the 19 ha site that has been repeated all over
it in the last two years)
Section of dunes next to the beach at the car park end
where the mountain stream washed rubbish into the sea some years ago.
Feb 2016: Heavy earth moving equipment and dumper trucks used
to cover exposed rubbish
May 2016: In the same place sand blew away exposing rubbish
once again.
June 2016: More sand brought in with dumper trucks.
Feb 2017: Back to square one. Rubbish exposed again as the
sand had all blown away as nets proved hopelessly inadequate in keeping it in
place.
April 2017: New nets erected right on top of the rubbish without
first covering it with sand as had been done twice before.
Nov 2017: Nets trashed by the wind.
 |
| Beginning of 2016 & Feb 2018 showing rubbish once again exposed in the same place |
Money wasted deepening the stream from the mountain.
August 2016: While the stream was running an excavator was used
to deepen it but because of the fine sand it just went back to its original
depth within hours of it being “deepened”.
Jan 2017: There was no sign that there had ever been a stream
there because the wind had blow so much sand across it.
May 2017: A bulldozer was used to dig out another river bed for
the stream even though there was absolutely no sign of any water running down
from the mountain as there was a serious drought.
Nov 2017: The river bed had once again completely disappeared
under tons of wind blown sand.
 |
| The new river bed and now |
For years sand blew onto the road to the Soetwater
recreational area and the Council brought in a front end loader from time to time
to clear it. All the nets on the
dunes nearby did nothing to prevent sand getting blown onto the road and even
when bulldozers and other earth moving equipment was being used nobody thought
to substantially reduced the height of the dunes next to the road. Now suddenly
in February 2018 nets have been erected for the first time next to the road in
an effort to stop the sand blowing onto it. But they had hardly been put up
when the wind had blown some over and almost buried others in the sand. And as most
of them are on high ground the chances of them all being flatted or buried very
quickly is huge, as this has happened all over the site in much more sheltered
places.
 |
| What's happening here is described immediately below |
It was then dumped in the nearby Witsands carpark making double work because it had to be removed from there. The ironical part of the second picture is that some of the newly erect nets next to the road (February 2018) are beside naturally grown Port Jackson, which the council has so far flatly refused to plant to stabilize the Witsands dunes at a fraction of the cost of nets and earth moving equipment.
Surely this is the most sensible way of
dealing with the Witsands site especially as the City Council badly needs money
for drought relief and numerous other projects to uplift the poor. And it makes
more sense that ever because
everything the Council has tried up to now
to stabilize the dunes has been such a very expensive failure.
March 29 2016:
In a Cape Argus article base on my post City
of Cape Town’s never ending money dump Gregg Oelofse was quoted as say: “We haven’t had litter
exposed for nearly 10 years.” He added that the netting was cost effective as
it was easy to pick up and move around.
Both statements were questionable. As the pictures
above show the litter is constantly being exposed because the nets do not do
the job they are supposed to do. In addition they are hardly easy to pick up
and move around when they get complete buried and trashed by the wind. It also turned out that they rot. This
results in new ones having to be erected in places where others had been put up
previously.
* * * *
 |
| Cape Argus story - not one of the nets shown still exist |
Why
does a local authority go on splurging money for years on something that
clearly does not work? It surely can’t be that none of its experts haven't got the
brains to realise this.
So I
can only assume there must be a reason that is not immediately apparent which
nobody is prepared to reveal.
Regards
Jon,
a Consumer Watchdog who is
Jon,
a Consumer Watchdog who is
also a Cape Town rate payer.
.
.
See also: money dump; wasting more money; worse money dumping;
Worse still ; blowing millions; money wasting again; the proof
Worse still ; blowing millions; money wasting again; the proof
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