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From Langebaan to Gqeberha – which Cape beaches have clean seawater, and which don't?

CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA - JANUARY 21: A general view of Camps Bay Tidal Pool on January 21, 2022 in Cape Town, South Africa. The tidal pool is one of the most popular tidal pools along the Atlantic Seaboard and it is a family-friendly place to swim and play. (Photo by Gallo Images/Misha Jordaan)

By Kristin Engel, Nkululeko Ndlovu and Estelle Ellis

16 Dec 2024

Summer brings thousands of people back to SA's Western and Eastern Cape beaches, but how clean is the seawater at these popular coastal destinations? It depends on who you ask.

As summer takes hold with sunny skies and balmy temperatures, beaches all over the Western Cape are filling up with locals and tourists looking to enjoy the coastal waters.

Municipalities have issued statements to assure the public of the water’s safety. But a closer look reveals varying degrees of compliance and differing methods of assessing coastal water quality, and experts warn that there are limitations to these municipal pronouncements on water quality.

Daily Maverick looked into how accurate these statements are and which bacteria tests were done in determining the status of water quality at beaches.

What we found was that most of the popular beaches in Cape Town, the Garden Route and the West Coast are safe for recreational use, but there are some coastal spots and methods of testing the water quality that are a cause for concern. Instead of testing for and releasing results for both E. coli and enterococcal bacteria, some municipalities provided either one or the other.

Cape Town beaches

The City of Cape Town recently announced that 30 of its most popular beaches achieved “world-class water quality results” ahead of the summer festive season.

To maintain transparency, the City also launched its Summer Dashboard on its website, displaying weekly updates of enterococci data for these beaches. This sparked debate about the exclusion of E. coli data in the published results.

Eddie Andrews, the City’s deputy mayor and mayoral committee member for spatial planning and environment, said the presence of enterococcal bacteria is now considered a more reliable indicator of sewage contamination in coastal waters and has become “the preferred indicator bacterium for assessing coastal water quality”, as opposed to E. coli.

Andrews said the data indicates the number of enterococcal bacteria measured per 100ml, and an individual count of less than 240 (<240) is regarded as safe for recreational purposes.

Also read: From Blue Flag to brown water – Durban’s coastal dilemma amidst sewage management failures

The Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment does not specify which of the indicators – E. coli or enterococci – should be used, and says local authorities are permitted to use their discretion in which one to apply, as long as they meet the limits as stated in the guidelines.

However, the department advises that it would be ideal for both to be analysed where possible, but this is often too costly for most municipalities. It also notes that microbiological indicator organisms – microorganisms such as bacteria and viruses – in water bodies are just one of the factors to consider when assessing recreational water quality.

Beachgoers at Camps Bay beach. (Photo: Siyabonga Goni)

Western Cape Blue Flag beaches

A total of 31 Western Cape beaches were awarded Blue Flag status for the 2024/25 season by the Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa (Wessa), which means they meet strict safety, water quality and accessibility criteria.

Eight are in Cape Town, two in Overstrand, one in Cape Agulhas, six in Hessequa, five in Mossel Bay, three in George and six in Bitou.

To comply with E. coli standards for beaches, units cfu/100ml must show results of <250, and in enterococci tests, units cfu/100ml must show results of <100.

Morgan Griffiths, senior manager for advocacy at Wessa, says these beaches generally have excellent water quality during the dry summer months. But heavy winter rains can lead to temporary spikes in bacterial levels by overwhelming sewerage systems and stormwater drains. Whenever contamination is suspected, Blue Flags are lowered and public notices are issued.

Along the Garden Route and the West Coast, popular beaches frequented include those in Nature’s Valley, Plettenberg Bay, Langebaan and Struisbaai, which all boast safe water quality for the holiday period, according to the various municipalities.

Garden Route District Municipality spokesperson Marillia Veldkornet said sampling at the beaches took place annually from October until the end of April.

To date, a total of about 80 water samples had been taken. The municipality shared the results of both its E. coli and enterococci tests, showing that the beaches were safe for recreational use.

In Plettenberg Bay, Robberg 5 Beach has been awarded Blue Flag status for 15 years now, and Keurbooms Beach for 13 years.

Apart from its Blue Flag status, nearby Nature’s Valley Beach also received a Green Coast Award from Wessa for its inclusive and sustainable management in less developed coastal sites with high biodiversity.

According to E. coli and enterococci test results shared by the Overstrand Municipality for the 2024/25 summer period to date, Kleinmond Beach also boasts water quality safe for recreational use.

As for Betty’s Bay Main Beach, a popular playground during the festive season, the municipality told Daily Maverick it did not keep records of the water quality because it is not a Blue Flag beach.

In the Langebaan area, the water quality results showed that Paradise Beach, Club Mykonos, Strandloper, Pearly’s and Kraalbaai in the southern end of the lagoon were perfectly safe for recreational use.

Jeffreys Bay in the Eastern Cape on 11 December 2024. (Photo: Deon Ferreira)

On the West Coast, the Saldanha Bay Water Quality Forum Trust acquires, receives and evaluates information from the monitoring of effluents, marine water quality and the ecosystem health of the Saldanha Bay and Langebaan Lagoon ecosystems.

The trust posts bacterial monitoring results on its website for E. coli and intestinal enterococci (faecal streptococci) from an independent lab, which shows that all has been clear for most of the year except for some problems in January.

The chairperson of the forum, Christo van Wyk, said no cases had been reported of beach users becoming ill with rashes, infections, fevers, diarrhoea or other gastrointestinal problems.

In Struisbaai, the Cape Agulhas Municipality does not take water samples throughout the year, but only during the summer season and only at Struisbaai Main Beach.

The municipality’s water quality results for November and December, when it tested for the presence of both E. coli and enterococci, revealed water that was safe for recreational activity.

Delphine Hopley, an administrative officer at the municipality, said there had not been any pollution incidents at Struisbaai Main Beach since it joined the Blue Flag programme in 2016.

In Mossel Bay, coastal water quality tests included both E. coli and enterococci. The Blue Flag beaches are Santos, De Bakke, Hartenbos, Klein Brak, Glentana and two pilot sites, Suiderkruis and Twee Kuilen. The latter is considered an extension of Diaz Beach, which is not a Blue Flag beach.

During the 2023/24 season, the Mossel Bay Municipality sampled Twee Kuilen 16 times and all results met the criteria.

Municipal spokesperson Cornelle Carstens-Johnston said: “The environmental department of the Mossel Bay Municipality took provisional Blue Flag samples in November 2024 for the 2024/25 season, and the first round of seasonal samples on 4 December. The results were again all below the threshold.”

A surfer at Jeffreys Bay in the Eastern Cape on 11 December 2024. (Photo: Deon Ferreira)

What the experts say

Water experts have warned that beachgoers should be aware of other factors that contribute to coastal water quality, as well as the limitations of municipal pronouncements on quality, especially when selective metrics are employed in water testing and scientific rigour may be lacking.

The issue of infrastructure decay in the country is a key factor in water quality and safety. Researchers have warned that there is a dual crisis in South Africa’s water sector: deteriorating infrastructure (with the majority of wastewater treatment facilities dysfunctional in one way or another), and a significant loss of public trust in government assurances regarding water safety.

Anthony Turton, a well-known water resource management specialist and a professor at the University of the Free State’s Centre for Environmental Management, said in a recent Facebook post that all municipal wastewater is discharged into rivers, and in some coastal cities it is discharged untreated into the ocean.

“Enjoy your summer vacation by avoiding the impact of sunburn, and the risk of exposure to sewageborne pathogens arising from the 1,000 wastewater treatment plants that are mostly in a state of nonfunctionality,” Turton wrote.

Sewage does not only enter the oceans via rivers. In Cape Town, the City’s discharge of “screened” sewage from marine outfall points has been an intensely debated matter.

The three outfalls are in Camps Bay, Hout Bay and Green Point. The only treatment the sewage receives is that it is pumped through sieves to remove solids before being released into the ocean.

Inadequate monitoring and testing is also a point of concern among experts. Turton told Daily Maverick that systemic changes in water quality monitoring were needed to protect public health effectively.

He said current monitoring efforts were insufficient as water quality testing was conducted infrequently and selective metrics were sometimes employed.

This led to the real-time impact of pollution on coastal water quality not being accurately assessed.

Factors such as climate change and urban development can also impact water quality by altering natural water flow and increasing runoff, further complicating pollution issues in coastal areas.

This could mean an increase in chemical contaminents in the water, which is a rising concern. Research indicates that chemicals accumulate in marine organisms, raising alarms about their potential toxicity.

However, Turton said there was a lack of rigorous scientific studies to quantify these risks effectively.

Red flags indicate where people should not swim. (Photo: Supplied)

Eastern Cape beaches

The last official E. coli figures released by the Nelson Mandela Bay metro in Gqeberha were for May, when the beaches were all deemed to be compliant with standards. Notably, however, the metro requires interested parties to request access to its water quality results using the Promotion of Access to Information Act. In terms of this law, it can take 30 days to request these reports, rendering them obsolete.

Daily Maverick applied for the water results, but has not received them.

Gary Koekemoer, the Eastern Cape spokesperson for Wessa, who is a regular open water swimmer, said the organisation had been monitoring sewage pollution at beaches in the city and the news for the festive season was good.

He said maintenance teams had worked hard and done some excellent work to prevent sewage spilling into the water.

“The only risk we have is if the electricity fails,” Koekemoer said, referring to sewage treatment plant pumps that stop working during power outages, which have been common in many places in the Nelson Mandela Bay metro lately.

His sentiments were echoed by Ward 2 councillor Sean Tappan, who said there had been a few minor spills but they were cleaned up quickly. No significant water-quality issues had been flagged for the Kouga or Ndlambe beaches.

Nahoon Beach in East London was closed for a few days early in December because of a massive sewage spill, but it was reopened in the second week of December. DM

Camps Bay tidal pool on 21 January 2022 in Cape Town, South Africa. The tidal pool is one of the most popular tidal pools along the Atlantic Seaboard. (Photo: Gallo Images / Misha Jordaan)

Medical expert, City of Cape Town weigh in on claims of seawater making beachgoers ill

Although the City of Cape Town boasts excellent water quality on its online Summer Dashboard, Daily Maverick has been monitoring some worrisome stories that tell otherwise via the Bays of Sewage group in the city.

Bays of Sewage was established out of concern for the City of Cape Town’s historical pumping of sewage into the ocean through its marine outfalls in Camps Bay, Hout Bay and Green Point, and its impact on both humans and marine life.

Anecdotal cases have come to light of beachgoers, surfers and swimmers becoming ill. Some of these beach users spoke to Daily Maverick about their recent experience of falling ill.

Danielle Bitton frequently swims in Saunders Rock tidal pool in Sea Point. She was swimming there over the weekend of 23 and 24 November with an open cut. On 26 November, a Tuesday, she started to get body aches. They got so bad that by Wednesday she was rushed to the ER at Christiaan Barnard Memorial Hospital, where she was diagnosed with a streptococcal infection in the blood. It progressed to septicaemia.

Bitton was not certain that the illness did stem from contact with polluted water.

Asked whether it was possible to develop a streptococcal infection from contact with contaminated water, UCT professor Marc Mendelson, who also heads the Division of Infectious Diseases and HIV Medicine at Groote Schuur Hospital, said this would depend on which type of streptococcus was causing the infection. He said most types were carried by people in their noses, upper airways and sinuses, and they gained access via those routes.

“It is conceivable but highly improbable that group A streptococcus could have gained entry into the body through a wound. But if it were to, then it would be much more likely to be self-inoculated rather than from water exposure,” Mendelson said.

Another Bay of Sewage user, Linda Trancel, told Daily Maverick that she swam at Camps Bay tidal pool and ingested some of the water on 20 November. Four days later, she started feeling sluggish and experienced intense nausea, extreme fatigue and chronic pain in her abdomen.

When Trancel finally saw a specialist, she was immediately admitted to Mediclinic Cape Town Hospital, where she was diagnosed with a Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) bacterial infection. She said her doctor ruled out other causes.

In her post on the group, she wrote: “I spent four days in hospital. In that time, a gastroscopy and a biopsy were done by two surgeons, and they suggested that I may have been exposed to this bacteria while swimming in Camps Bay tidal pool – which I had done five days before I started to show symptoms...”

She later told Daily Maverick: “The beaches are not all that clean. You can see when you go to some of the beaches ... the sludge in the water. Sometimes you can smell it.”

Mendelson said H. pylori was a common resident in humans’ stomachs and a cause of gastric and duodenal ulcers. “It will have been found when a doctor put a scope down into the stomach and a biopsy was taken. It is exceptionally improbable that it could be the cause of her admission.”

He said waterborne infections from sewage-contaminated water were more commonly enteral infections caused by microorganisms – bacteria such as E. coli, shigella, campylobacter and salmonella.

City Health noted the two incidents, but said it would be imprudent to comment on specific cases without having the full medical history of the persons involved.

However, in response to Trancel’s case, City Health echoed Mendelson’s opinion that H. pylori was the cause of gastric ulcers and a common infection, usually passed from person to person through normal contact. “Chronic infection leads to gastritis and gastric ulcers. It is likely that the patient had the infection far longer than the time between swimming and presentation,” it said.

In Bitton’s case, it said: “Infection and septicaemia occur when there is a break in the skin and/or a decrease in a person’s natural defences (immune system, stress etc.) It is not usually bacteria found in water, or a cause of waterborne illnesses.”

City Health added: “It is difficult to speak to the specifics of these incidents. It is advised that the healthcare professionals who treated the patients contact City Health should they be concerned about potential contamination.”

The health authority said it had not received any reports of beachgoers experiencing illnesses such as rashes, infections or gastrointestinal issues potentially linked to contact with coastal waters over the past year. - Kristin Engel/DM

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.

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