From Blue Flag to brown water: Durban's coastal dilemma amidst sewage management failures

Pennington Beach, a new recipient of a Blue Flag. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

By Tony Carnie

16 Dec 2024

KZN still has some rock star beaches, but a sewage stink persists along Durban’s Golden Mile.

With their warm subtropical sea temperatures, the beaches of KwaZulu-Natal have long been a major drawcard for tourists – and locals.

But their shine has dulled in recent years because of the increasing flow of human sewage pollution into the Indian Ocean, especially along Durban’s famed Golden Mile.

The eThekwini Municipality pulled out of the 20-year-old Blue Flag beach excellence programme – for a second time – soon after the April 2022 floods devastated coastal infrastructure in several parts of the province. Two-and-a-half years later, Durban has been unable to recover a single Blue Flag and is struggling to consistently meet the less-stringent national water quality guidelines.

Apart from Durban, there is very little publicly accessible information on beach water quality and amenities for most municipalities along the KwaZulu-Natal coastline. However, the latest list of Blue Flag beaches shows that there are still several beaches with excellent-quality seawater along the North and South coasts.

One shining star is Trafalgar Beach on the South Coast, which has managed to comply with the very stringent Blue Flag water quality standards for 15 consecutive years.

Eight other KwaZulu-Natal beaches have Blue Flag status: Marina, Southport, Umzumbe, Ramsgate, Hibberdene and Pennington on the South Coast, and Blythedale and Thompson Bay on the North Coast.

Seven other beaches have pilot flag status – they are working towards Blue Flag status, but do not yet meet all the criteria.

Further up the coast, closer to the Mozambique border, there are several near-pristine swimming, snorkelling and diving spots, though some are not easily accessible because of their remote location and sandy roads.

Dr Jean Harris, a marine scientist and director of the WildOceans programme, rates Sodwana Bay on the North Coast and Aliwal Shoal on the South Coast among the country’s top diving spots, along with Oudekraal and False Bay in the Western Cape.

Read more: Cape beaches and the status of seawater quality – the good, the bad, the ugly, the fresh and the foul

Yet eThekwini – once a top coastal tourist destination, with a coastline of almost 100km – is still failing to ensure consistently clean seawater results.

Ongoing problems

The metro has sought to blame its woes on the 2022 floods, but problems emerged long before that. As far back as 2006, four Blue Flag beaches in the metro were unable to comply with sewage pollution standards.

Durban eventually pulled out of the scheme in 2008 during the tenure of former city manager Michael Sutcliffe (before re-entering the scheme in 2013 after his departure). He argued that Blue Flag administrators were applying “double standards” when comparing the cleanliness of seawater in Durban with that in Europe.

Thompson Bay, a Blue Flag beach. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

KZN beaches sewage pollution Pennington Beach, a new recipient of a Blue Flag. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

More recently, the Northern Wastewater Treatment Works on the Umgeni River has become a persistent problem.

Months before the 2022 floods, eThekwini was served with a written warning by the national Department of Water and Sanitation to take immediate action to reduce the flow of poorly treated sewage from this facility, which flows directly into the sea at Blue Lagoon via the Umgeni River.

Read more: Relocated to ‘unbearable’ shelters, 2022 KZN flood victims now fear eviction

Twelve months ago, acknowledging that the Northern works was a mess, the metro agreed to let the uMngeni-uThukela Water utility take over this facility and most other sewage treatment works – yet the problems have clearly still not been resolved.

Under pressure from the hospitality industry to restore the metro’s tattered image ahead of the Christmas holiday season, eThekwini mayor Cyril Xaba put on a brave face on 27 November, announcing that 19 Durban beaches were clean and ready to welcome visitors – though four were polluted and “temporarily closed”.

Shortly afterwards, the municipality published a beach status table stating that only two beaches were closed.

However, Daily Maverick has compared the City’s table with other sources of official data and found that several beaches are not as squeaky clean as eThekwini claims.

This is because the table only contained readings for E. coli bacteria, not enterococci, which are another indicator used by several countries to monitor sewage pollution levels.

Daily Maverick found that at least four of the beaches that eThekwini declared to be clean were in fact noncompliant with enterococci guidelines stipulated by the national Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment.

Asked to explain these discrepancies and to respond to suggestions that it was deliberately cherry-picking favourable results for public broadcast, the the eThekwini Municipality said enterococci and E. coli were both indicators of faecal contamination but had “different characteristics and implications for human health”.

Municipal spokesperson Gugu Sisilana said the metro focused on E. coli, partly because it was easy to measure and had also been correlated with an increased risk for illness among swimmers.

On why eThekwini did not close beaches with high enterococci readings, the metro argued that the national guidelines focused on E. coli as the “primary indicator of faecal contamination” and that there was “limited data” on the relationship between enterococcal bacteria levels and human health risks when compared with E. coli.

This is in stark contrast to Cape Town, which recently opted to only provide enterococci results in its Summer Dashboard guide for swimmers, on the basis that most global health and environmental authorities have opted for enterococci as the preferred indicator for assessing coastal water quality.

Cape Town officials argue that there are “limitations” to using E. coli as an indicator, since this bacteria is not exclusive to humans and could originate from animal waste or even from reservoirs in kelp.

“In short, it is not a very reliable indicator of risk to humans in coastal waters,” according to deputy mayor Eddie Andrews.

But that’s not the way the regulator seems to see things.

We contacted the environment department to clarify whether coastal towns and cities are permitted to select one indicator bacteria only, or whether they are obliged to consider both E. coli and enterococcal bacteria levels when deciding whether water quality is compliant.

The short answer from the department is that it would prefer local authorities to analyse both. “The department does not specify which of the indicators should be used. Local authorities use their discretion on which one to apply as long as they meet the limits as stated in the guidelines.

“However, the guidelines do state that enterococci are the more suitable indicator for marine waters. E. coli have been shown to die off faster in seawater under certain circumstances and can therefore be undetected in monitoring programmes.

“Studies have also shown poorer relationships between E. coli densities and illness rates in bathers compared with enterococci.”

Nevertheless, it still advised that E. coli be used together with enterococci in seawater analyses.

“Due to the benefit of both these indicators, it would be ideal for both enterococci and E. coli to be analysed where possible.”

Department spokesperson Peter Mbelengwa said: “However, if both indicators were measured and one of them was not compliant with the guidelines, it would mean that the beach where those samples were collected was not compliant with the guidelines.”

Through the roof

But these disagreements on method become almost academic in light of the latest damning water quality test results on Durban beaches, conducted independently by the Durban University of Technology.

These results, from 9 December, show that eight out of 10 beach water tests along the Durban beachfront exceeded the national water quality guidelines for E. coli.

The levels at Addington Beach were more than six times higher than the maximum guideline level of 500 colony-forming units per millilitre, and the E. coli levels in the Umgeni River were through the roof – almost 50 times higher than seawater quality guidelines.

Professor Faizal Bux, head of the university’s Institute for Water and Wastewater, said seawater quality can vary daily because of the influence of heavy rainfall, tides or wind.

Read more: SA faces serious human health risks if we continue discharging toxic sewage into waterways

However, he suggested that the primary cause of Durban’s recent poor seawater quality could be traced back to wastewater management failures.

“You just have to drive past sections of the Umgeni River and you can actually smell it [sewage]. We have brought this to the attention of the municipality on several occasions,” Bux said.

“We already have a poor image in Durban and it just takes one episode to harm public perceptions further. We have such a beautiful coastline, but it [sewage] is not being dealt with, with the urgency it deserves.” DM

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

Categories:

Tags:

DM is much better if you are signed in...

South Africa

Ongoing problems

Through the roof