PETITION TO THE CITY OF CAPE TOWN: DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY AND IMMEDIATE ACTION ON SEWAGE SPILLS IN HELDERBERG AND BEYOND, PROTECTING HEALTH, BUSINESSES, THE ENVIRONMENT AND OCEAN RECREATIONAL WELFARE 

We, the undersigned residents of the Helderberg region in Subcouncil 8, alongside concerned citizens across Cape Town, petition the City of Cape Town to end recurring sewage spills that devastate our health, local businesses, the environment and ocean coastline well-being. 

These failures extend beyond Helderberg, polluting beaches and coastal waters of the Mother City, undermining Cape Town's status as the world's top destination for natural biodiversity and tourism. 

Overview of the Crisis 

Ailing sewage network failures cause overflows into rivers, beaches, and the ocean, spiking E. coli and Enterococci levels. This contaminates recreational waters, repels tourists, cripples businesses, and harms ecological biodiversity as environmental health risks are understated.

The City hasn’t adopted the WHO – Recreational Water Quality Safety Guidelines for Monitoring and Communication of Environmental Health risk and is in breach of national standards like the National Coastal Recreational Water Quality Guidelines for reporting E. coli and Enterococci data and the City’s own Coastal Sewage Pollution Response Protocols.

Sewage Contamination has no borders

The City Inland Rivers and Wetlands Report May 2024 highlighted that our rivers and waterways are at 59% contamination with a 20% increase from the previous reporting period <2021.

Litter is a visual indication to pollution, but sewage related pollution is harder to monitor yet across the Mother City scientific research and data confirms contamination found in coastal environments with pharmaceuticals discovered in marine creature and even in critically endangered African Penguins eggs that are struggling with declining fish stocks.

Catchment areas are conduits for river and stormwater system flushing many informal settlements waste and litter, along with poorly treated discharges from Waste Water Treatment Works into our coastal environments.

Milnerton Lagoon, Zandvlei, Rondevlei and Zeekoevlei are examples where recreational bodies are suffering with the Diep, Black, Disa, Lotus, Eerste, Lourens, Soet and Sir Lowrys Rivers are all barometers of environmental degradation.

Least not forgetting the three Atlantic Seaboard Marine Outfall Pipelines with a Coastal Water Discharge Permit from The Department of Forestry, Fishery and Environment that allows the daily discharges 50 million liters of raw sewage into the Table Mountain National Parks Reserve and Robben Island Marine Protected Area from Hout Bay, Camps Bay and Green Point remains a blight to the City’s environmental custodianship. 

Violation of Constitutional and Legal Rights 

These spills infringe Section 24 of the Constitution, denying us a protected environment free from pollution. They also trigger:

• NEMA Section 28: The City's duty of care to prevent foreseeable harm to health and the environment.
• NEMA Section 30: Mandatory pollution incident notices and remediation within hours, not weeks.
• City Bylaws (e.g., Water and Sanitation By-law): Requirements for infrastructure maintenance to avoid public health risks.
• National Health Act: Protection from sewage-borne diseases like gastroenteritis.
   

Environmental Health Impacts Us All

The community has experienced beach closures and suffered ongoing discharges of sewage into key recreational areas, with residents and business overwhelmed by odor; this contamination fuels public anxiety that impacts recreational enjoyment and threatens tourism, as economic repercussion erodes property values and livelihoods.

Residents and beach goers face severe bacterial infections from contaminated waters, with children and the elderly most vulnerable to sewage-borne diseases like gastroenteritis whilst more extreme cases of hospitalization and ICU treatment have been reported. 

Hospitality, retail, and tourism businesses lose millions annually due to public anxiety as advisories that repel visitors and cripple local economies yet also impacts daily recreational enjoyment of the communities. 

Sewage devastates wetlands, estuaries, and marine ecosystems, killing seabirds, fish, and other wildlife essential to our biodiversity. This pollution flows directly into False Bay, threatening biodiversity and popular recreational actives nodes that define our coastal lifestyle. 

The City's aloof response, prioritizing vanity projects over basic maintenance, ignores public input and deflects ratepayer anguish, compounding the crisis.

Demand for Full Accountability

As ratepayers funding the City’s No.1 global status, we demand transparency from the City of Cape Town:

Total property levy revenue per Ward.
Breakdown of expenditures on Water & Sanitation maintenance, roads, ablutions, cleaning, law enforcement, and recreational areas according to the Wards.
 

Specific Demands

The City must:

• Acknowledge ratepayer associations as official stakeholders in Subcouncil 8 decisions.
  Release audited CAFR Financial revenue/expenditure reports within 14 days.
• Pollution Control response: Adopt a sewage network update status advising the public of incidents, prioritizing overflow hotspots.
• Implement monitoring: Establish a Water Quality Flag System (Colour advisory status based on E. coli/Enterococci per national guidelines), with independent oversight and daily public dashboards.
• Enhance facilities: Install adequate public showers and paid ablutions access for afterhours at key node areas.
• Enforce protocols: Adhere to NEMA Section 28 & 30 notices (preemptive advisories and immediate containment/cleanup) and Coastal Sewage Pollution Response Protocols (public alerts within 2 hours of spills).
• Achieve WESSA Blue Flag Status within 5 years. 
• Halt expansion: Impose a moratorium on new developments until basic services infrastructure achieves adequate capacity without spills.
• Compensate impacts: Provide economic relief funds for affected residents, businesses and environmental health risk compensation scheme.

Conclusion and Deadline

Act now to restore our environment, economy, and well-being.  We demand written acknowledgement and a binding action plan by 31 March 2026 to maintain or upgrade ailing infrastructure and implement proactive warnings to downstream and impacted communities.

By signing, I confirm my support for this petition, either as an individual or representing an organization/business and pledge my undertaking to promote greater environmental custodianship.

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