Water Stories Online Community Connection 1 July 2022
Participants:
Amber Abrams — Future Water, UCT
Denisha Anand — Princess Vlei Forum; Water Quality in Wetlands and Waterways Committee
Prof Jo Barnes — Senior Lecturer Emeritus, Epidemiology, University of Stellenbosch
Dr Sarah Davies — Exact Ecology
Robert de Jager — Architect
Vanessa Farr — Mycelium Media Colab / Water Stories
Faith Gara — Environmental Humanities South / Water Stories
Christiana Groenewoud — Milnerton Lions Club, Fo Blaauwberg Cons Area / Rietvlei, Ward 107 Comm
Shannon Hampton — International Ocean Institute Southern Africa
Dr Shannen Keyser — Department of Medical Biosciences, UWC
Danielle Klaff — Friends of the Rivers of Hout Bay
Kathrin Krause — Landscape Designer and Architect
Traci Kwaai — The Fisherchild; Walks of Remembrance
Councillor Alex Lansdowne — Water Quality in Wetlands and Waterways Committee
Councillor Maryam Manuel — SUCO; CoCT Water & Sanitation Portfolio Comm; WQWW Committee
Caroline Marx — #rethinkthestink; WQWW Committee
Natalie Nolte — Mycelium Media Colab / Water Stories
Prof Leslie Petrik — Environmental Nano Sciences, Dept Chemistry, UWC; SANOcean Project
Noora Salie — SUCO; Kuils River Bioremediation Project
Klaudia Schachtschneider — WWF South Africa; Table Mountain Water Source Partnership
Asemahle Sibango — Environmental Humanities South
Bruce Snaddon — Friends of Silvermine Nature Area (FOSNA)
Dr Nikiwe Solomon — Environmental Humanities South / Water Stories
Jemima Spring — Mycelium Media Colab / Water Stories
Magne Olav Sydnes — University of Stavanger, SANOcean Project
Jacqueline van Meygaarden — Mycelium Media Colab / Water Stories
Introduction
15.00 — JS — Mycelium Media Colab
I hope that this is okay for everybody that our meeting is being recorded, please let us know. But it’s an open forum, we’re hoping the conversation will continue and it will lead to other things. So we do want to make resources available for people who haven’t been able to join us.
Grounding
Mycelium / Water Stories Intro
We shared some news in our recent newsletter detailing some new things that are going to be coming up. And that’s where collaboration comes in… here are a couple of quotes …that collaboration is not about gluing together existing egos, it’s about the ideas that never existed until after everyone entered the room. So here we all are in the room together. And we wanted to just create an opportunity for connection and to see what ideas and and synergies could emerge from everybody in this room. Everyone who is passionate about water. There’s a lot of seriousness, there’s a lot of hard work… but we also want to have some fun with our work and introduce that aspect. …
… for those of you who haven’t had a chance to check out the website, www.water stories.co.za. It’s designed to have various different entry points. We have a storytelling map that has various different nodes, it’s already led to other collaborations with projects around water — the Community Resilience in Cape Town project with the Western Cape Water Caucus and the ACDI, that also is on here as well as our various different nodes relating to water, water treatment works, but also stories as well around the different watersheds. And this can be a place where we can be sharing different water community stories.
And then what we’re really hoping to do is close that loop of connection between the storytelling on the (web)site and what is happening on the ground. So we can share what everybody’s doing either through the blog, or through the static pages, which we develop more slowly over time, around different watersheds. So this is Greenpoint, a lot of content there around the marine outfalls and public activism around that. And there’s some content from our partners who are working on pollution, chemical pollution in particular … so there’s all practical information there. And then under the stories tabs, that’s where we’re going to be building out more watersheds, Kuils River, Urban rivers, the wetlands, Milnerton Lagoon, and various other key places. So we’re very keen to hear from everyone around the work that they’re doing in those areas.
And then this is not on there yet. But we’re going to add a blog, and we’re going to add a calendar. And we really do invite everybody to be in touch around what they’re up to. So this can become a point where everything around water, especially in Cape Town, is collected. And and there are a lot of other similar projects or allied projects, you know, so how can we as Water Stories support each other or support you and connect with, with what you’re doing? So on each page, there’s lots of links to other other sites or more information — it really is a big collaborative effort.
… I invite everybody to please explore and let us know what you think and how you what you’re doing can fit in with this, but also especially the work on the ground, how can those events, generate stories that we can share, but at the same time, the stuff that’s being shared, encourage other people who are engaging with this content to get involved where they’re at and make a change in their lives or get involved with things that are happening in their neighborhoods or whatever the action is required. And with that, I’m going to hand over to Nikiwe Solomon from EHS. Newly Dr… who has just done some very important work on the Kuils River.
Speakers
Dr Nikiwe Solomon
Environmental Humanities South, UCT
… I’m Nikiwe Solomon, and I’m from the Environmental Humanities South, which is a centre based at the University of Cape Town. So I’m just going to quickly speak about what we do in the Environmental Humanities and then just try and filter it down to our interest in water, and how we’re part of the collective that works on these Water Stories and where we would like to go and what we envision for this project in collecting these stories. So Environmental Humanities South is a research unit that’s located in the Faculty of Humanities at UCT. And our work focuses mainly mainly on understanding the relations between humans and the environment in all areas of cultural production. For example, looking at the social processes involved in generation and circulation of cultural forms, practices, values and shared understandings of the environment.
And we emphasize these types of relationships from the Global South, because that’s often underrepresented in conversations around the environment and in terms of that, in the context of globalization, we look at the kind of economic division between the haves and the have nots, the richer and poorer countries, and the kind of predicaments that [inaudible] talks about about the global within the Global Studies Center in Cologne. So what our work aims to do is to actually facilitate interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary academic collaboration, as well as build partnerships with civil society and governance structures, in order to broaden the kinds of questions that we are asking in relation to … what matters to people the most. We also look at how do we do our research, looking at research methods Are they relevant to the kinds of questions we’re asking, and also to engage and provide resources to environmental decision makers.
So in the Environmental Humanities, it broadly engages with issues around, you know, people in soil conservation, parks, environmental history, looking at issues of justice, and also looking at the Creative Arts, how can we engage with the creative arts to you know, tell the stories, and engage broader societies. And we also look at environmental contamination working with Leslie Petrik at UWC. And she’s going to talk about the project there. So within the Water Portfolio, we have supported students that are working on a broad number of issues. So we have some looking at you know, more located issues, so looking at people’s relationships to wetlands, looking at the aquifer working with aquifers, what does the aquifer have to say about how it’s being engaged with, we’re working with wetlands in Zimbabwe, and also looking at multi species interactions in these water spaces. So we have a student that’s working in Bujumbura in Burundi, looking at hippopotomi and the growth of the urban space in Burundi. And then we also have Faith who’s working on looking at what kind of designs do we need for the future, the city design in relation to make them water sensitive and livable neighborhoods in the kind of futures we’re looking at?
And then we also have issues around poaching, dealing with marine resources. How do we deal with issues around justice for people that are now being considered as poachers, who were traditionally fisherpeople, but because of the kind of governance changes in the law, they have been relegated as criminals now, so we’re looking at those issues and looking at issues around infrastructure as well. So my work particularly on the Kuils River looks at the complexities of you know, these multiple meanings that people have around water, and sometimes how they come into conflict with each other. And yet we have the same goals, we’re trying to reach the same goals, which is to protect, you know, these water resources.
…So I think that the biggest thing, when it comes to looking at issues around water, is how do we get people to care more about this resource outside of, you know, the economic framing? You know, looking at it beyond just extractive relationships, how do we get people to connect more? And how do we imagine seeing our waterways, in light of what happened in 2017 and 2018 with the Day Zero looming on us, and in other parts of the country, Day Zero is nearing. So how do we imagine our rivers in the context of such severe droughts? We have climate change issues, that we’re dealing with unpredictable weather patterns. So imagine if we could go to the river to collect water rather than standing, waiting for water from a water tank under military guard? So how can we reimagine these relationships to our waterways? And how do we approach this as a collective?
So we have people from Milnerton, I see Catherine is here, we’ve got Maryam here, who’s worked with… lives along the Kuils River. All of these people have different struggles with water. But how do we work as a collective to bigger build a bigger voice, a bigger movement around water around Cape Town, so that we can actually start thinking about the future of these waterways? And how do we create this lively space? We can speak about regeneration where we can think about, you know, redress, about justice, about collective activism. And yeah, so that’s the goal of the portfolio of the water portfolio in Environmental Humanities. And I think I’m gonna pass on to Lesley Petrik, who can speak more to her work with SANOcean.
Prof Leslie Petrik
Environmental Nano Sciences, UWC; SANOcean Project
…We live in the Chemistry Building at UWC. And I’m actually an empiricist. So I go around measuring and weighing things, and produce empirical evidence. But in our studies, we’ve realized that we actually are very involved in other aspects of knowledge. If we’re going to be able to solve this problem of pollution, we cannot hope to achieve it just by producing facts. Because the trouble is that people that are regulators and authorities use counterfactual facts to argue against us. So I think what we need to do in this collective is to really look at how each one of us can contribute from our particular perspective. Because the problems that we’re finding are political problems and social problems, and design problems, and infrastructural problems, engineering problems, and personal problems, attitudes, values. These things have a part in the complexity of the situation that we are facing, in terms of our water quality.
And I have done studies on our wastewater treatment plants to see how well the wastewater treatment plants are working. And I’ve also been measuring the pollutants that we generate through our daily lives, that are going to the ocean, and pollute our marine environment and marine organisms. So we actually have to be very careful about what we’re using. So it’s got a lot to do with our own daily habits as well. And we’ve been engaging with a variety of other scientists at the moment to try and see how we can resolve some of the problems of our own habits.
So we’ve spoken to the pharmacists to understand why it is that we find so many unmetabolized pharmaceuticals, in our marine environment, and learned about the bioavailability of drugs. And the fact that actually very few drugs actually are 100% metabolized when you take them in. So many of the drugs that you take are excreted from your body in unmetabolized form and go into the environment like that. But it’s also very difficult to measure the metabolites that are broken up, because one just doesn’t have the quantification to do that.
And then we’ve also been working with spermatologists most recently and I just want to introduce Shannon Keyser to you. She’s working in the spermatology laboratory [in the Dept of Medical Biosciences] at UWC. And she’s looking how these chemicals are impacting on the motility and the vitality of sperm. And we’ve really seen some very interesting results most recently from the different levels of these contaminants on the viability of sperm. So, I think what started off as a fairly small project has actually become a very large project with numerous different aspects.
I must also just introduce Magne Sydnes to you, he’s our colleague from Norway. And he’s a chemist looking at trying to formulate new types of molecules that will not be so persistent, that will degrade after use and I think that that is the way we have to go finally, when we’re talking about these very persistent contaminants, but so much of this has got to do with other aspects, and I hope that the collective will discuss, how are we going to go about resolving the problems that we face.
JS 25:31 … I just also wanted to welcome Councillor Alex Lansdowne… He’s part of a very interesting and exciting movement, I think, within the City of Cape Town with the Wetland Quality Advisory Committee, and he’s going to share a little bit more about that …it would be really great to hear a little bit more about the committee and your work. And we understand that the City of Cape Town often takes a lot of pressure and a lot of heat. So it’s great to be able to share work that is really inspirational and hopeful.
Councillor Alex Lansdowne
City of Cape Town; Water Quality in Wetlands and Waterways Committee
Thank you so much for having me in this meeting. And it’s really nice to see lots of familiar faces from politics and other areas. I see my good friends, Caroline Marx, as well as my good friend Danielle Klaff who made sure that I came to this meeting. So I lead the Mayoral Advisory Committee on Water Quality in Wetlands and Waterways in the City of Cape Town. This is a new committee in the City of Cape Town that took over in this administration from a committee that was called the Water Resilience Committee. The Water Resilience Committee was a special committee made up of experts that was established in the last term to help guide the city in drought response. This time around with the — we call it for short the Wetlands Committee — we have another crisis, which is the fact that our rivers and our vleis are not in the place where we want them to be.
There are unfortunate amounts of water pollution from sewage of various sources. We are losing wetlands to land invasion, we are not doing justice to our water. And this is a top priority in the City of Cape Town. … I’m currently on recess. So it means that we just sort of finished our first half of legislating and doing committee working in the City of Cape Town. So I’ve had just a few… a week or two to reflect on the last six months, which have been a bit of a journey, and I think I can maybe use this forum to just update the water community on the work that we’re doing.
So we set up this thing called the Mayor’s Priority Program on Inland Water Quality, which essentially is a program that is guiding on a catchment basis our solutions to improving water quality. There’s billions of rands in this budget that will be spent over the course of this term in a few main spends. The biggest capital stream is the work that we need to do to invest in building new infrastructure for a rapidly growing city. So we have major major investments in the big wastewater treatment works. We will say investing in upgrading and bringing our telemetry work into the 21st century, so making sure that sewage can be pumped properly where it needs to go. We are thirdly investing a lot of money in rehabilitating our vleis and our water bodies and all the catchments, Milnerton Lagoon Princess Vlei, Zeekoevlei, Zandvlei. And we’re working towards a broader catchment approach in the city.
Today is the first of July, which means that it is the first day of the new financial year in the City of Cape Town. And today I walked the length of the Liesbeek River. So I started in Kirstenbosch this morning, and walked all the way down to Observatory. Together with community activists, councillors and city officials, looking at the state of that river, and that is one of the one of the healthier rivers in the City of Cape Town, the water is clear and clean, and there’s forms of life all along. That’s not the case in other areas. Two, three weeks ago… it was about three weeks ago, I walked along the little Liesbeek River from Ottery through Parkwood, Grassy Park Lotus River, to Zeekoevlei, here is where the river was really clean. And there were areas where the river really just wasn’t in the state that we’d like to see it.
And I met a young father that had a baby. And he lived in a house that sort of backed up onto the Little Lotus River canal. And on the other side of the canal, every night, illegal dumpers come, trucks of people come and they take solid waste, and they chuck it into the canal. And he said… the fumes that are coming from the river when the temperature drops at night “are making my baby sick.” And it’s a really, really clear example of what happens when communities and the City aren’t working together. They are areas along that same Canal where there’s a Neighbourhood Watch and communities know and understand the river. And those areas are cleaner. But there are areas where people are slightly removed and there are all sorts of antisocial negative things happening.
So our approach, in terms of all of this money that we plan on spending to improve water quality, is to also open the doors. So my Section 80 committee… has four councillors on it, I see one of them here today. I’m one of them, the two Mayco members. And then we’ve got I think it’s seven external advisors. This is probably the only committee of its kind in the entire country in local government that has more external people than politicians. And that’s simply because we acknowledge that we don’t have all the solutions. So we’ve got the best and brightest minds that are guiding the implementation of this work. From Liz and Jenny Day, to Phil McLean, from the Friends of the Liesbeek to Dr. Kevin Winter to Caroline Marx and Denisha (Anand). And what’s really exciting about this work and what’s been incredibly rewarding, is the level of interrogation that our scientists and our experts can provide over the things that the City of Cape Town is committed to doing.
Mayoral Advisory Committee on Water Quality in Wetlands and Waterways in the City of Cape Town Mayor Hill-Lewis (chair), Mayoral Committee Member for Water and Sanitation, Zahid Badroodien; councillor Maryam Manuel; councillor Alex Lansdowne; Dr Liz Day (an aquatic ecologist), Professor Jenny Day; Denisha Anand (community conservation specialist); Sinethemba Luthango (management at Khayelitsha Wetlands); and Caroline Marx (Milnerton Residents’ Association member and water activist). Not pictured are Mayoral Committee Member for Spatial Planning and Environment (Deputy Mayor) Alderman Eddie Andrews, Dr. Kevin Winter (Aquatic Ecologist), and Phillip McLean (Environmental Compliance Expert).
And you know… the last three weeks have been incredibly difficult for the City of Cape Town. We had a unexpected amount of rain and precipitation. And that really shocked our infrastructure across the city. And now we have stage six load shedding. And all across the city our pump stations are tripping. We’re running out of diesel in some areas. Our equipment is struggling to switch on and off. And we’re at risk again of sewage overflows. But I was at a meeting with the mayor earlier this week and the officials and we plan on putting some further remedial actions in place. On my side, number one, working towards and my personal goal — I put my head on the line for this — is that I want to leave the end of my five years with much cleaner water than we found it. And we committed to doing that. And the second thing is, we’re ready to pitch up and participate in forums like this to hear from the water community, what they have to think and take on any constructive criticism, any further suggestions. So thank you so much for the time. And I will listen in for the remainder of the meeting.
Four Agreements
Community Harvest
What is your water story?
Speakers
Asemahle Sibango
Environmental Humanities South, UCT
Asemahle here. I’m a student from Environmental Humanities. I’m currently busy writing up my (Masters) thesis. I will work with the Khayelitsha Wetlands Park, I am trying to understand diverse ways of knowing care, of practicing care. So I’m listening to people’s stories and their multi species stories that live with the Khayelitsha Wetlands Park, how do they practice care for the wetland? Because when I read the City of Cape Town plans and strategies… and the National wetland strategies, they’re mostly informed by economic purposes, which is ecotourism. And the solutions …that they implement or the strategies that they implement to take care of wetlands are mostly like technoscience. And, yeah, it’s mostly controlling… it’s cement and… never the stories that people live in the space, how they understand, how they practice care, are often overlooked.
So I’m trying to visualize their voices, how they understand care, how they practice care. For instance… with some documents that I read from the Department of Forestry and Agriculture, they understood gardening like as an aesthetic value to wetlands or for physical appearance. Meanwhile, one of my participants, which I interacted with on this, who practices gardening in Khayelitsha Wetlands Park, there’s more than just an aesthetic, there’s more than just a wetland or the space providing food for them. They have deeper connections than that, like, for instance, a safe space. It’s what they shared with me. And also… it’s not mainly about how the wetland cares for them. They also like provide care. I tried to use one of the South African sayings… Give and take. So instead of expecting care from the wetland, they also care for the wetland. And it’s not an extractive relationship in a way. …and also what I’m trying to do, I’m trying to urge the government and the institutions that are responsible for wetlands, not to understand care for wetlands from a technoscientific, or from a political, or from an economic… they have to be diverse. So I’m using theories such as queering, ways of knowing, or decolonizing. I’m urging them to talk to the people who live with the spaces and understand and involve them more.
Magne Sydnes
SANOcean Project, Uni Stavanger
Hello I’m Magne Sydnes and yes I work together with Leslie. I’m in Stavanger, Norway. Yes working with Leslie Petrik in Cape Town. We are on a joint program as Leslie said earlier, the SANOcean Project. So Leslie is conducting the research in Cape Town and we are doing similar type of work in Stavanger which has a much smaller population than what you have and a better sewage system than most of the outlets in Cape Town area. But still we are looking at the impact of the sewage outlets to the ocean here, through caging studies and laboratory studies and analytical chemistry. I’m a synthetic organic chemist so I’m also… it’s sort of depressing looking at all the pollution in the ocean globally and without being able to do something about it. In my research as an organic chemist I’m working on solutions to that which Leslie mentioned briefly.
Firstly focusing in on antibiotics… but the chemistry we are developing things that can be used in all kinds of drugs to make them more easily detoxified in a sense or broken down once it hits the environment, so building a unit into antimicrobial agents that makes them photodecompose once they are excreted from the patient, the patient being a human being or an animal, it doesn’t really matter. So the point is you build in a weak point in the molecule, but it’s only weak when it’s exposed to light. But as long as it’s in the dark or in the packaging or in the body it’s active, then it starts breaking down faster once it’s exposed to light.
In the first instance we think we have the largest chance to be successful in the farming industry because the manure from animals is spread on the fields and obviously exposed to light much more readily than a sewage plume that goes far into the ocean. Here in Stavanger it goes into the ocean at minus 80 metres so obviously not much light there. But manure spread on fields as fertiliser would obviously be exposed to great amounts of light and then would have more chance of being quickly decomposed and then removed from nature.
And starting with antibiotics obviously has the motivation that we also want to be able to remove antibiotics quicker from the environment and to be one way of dealing with the antimicrobial resistance that is also a building problem, in addition to the fact that the antibiotics in themselves are also polluting the environment. So that’s shortly what we are doing. So monitoring the situation, but also trying to add a solution into the problem which can make things better in the future. Because we cannot go back to the Stone Age — medicine is here to stay, but we can do things in a way that makes them more readily broken down and remove them quicker from the environment.
Caroline Marx
#rethinkthestink, Wetland Water Quality Advisory Committee
I’m Caroline Marx. I accidentally became a water activist because of the pollution in our local river, the Diep River and Milnerton Lagoon. I’ve been challenging this for about six to seven years… have heard many plans and promises. And unfortunately, the situation continued to decline. So eventually, about two and a half years ago, I was able to get the assistance of OUTA, the Organization for Undoing of Tax Abuse, to help me cover the cost of independent water testing, to prove that there is a problem, and also the support of their legal team. So my focus is mainly been there until now.
I have also through this linked up with many other water activists. And what’s become more and more clear to me is how important networking events like this one are, to further the understanding of each other’s problems and viewpoints, and also to share resources. I have been in communication with some similar groups up in KwaZulu Natal. And they tell me about all sorts of projects, which I think have great potential in the Western Cape, and even some really basic things that I had no idea about. And I think we always tend to accuse the government organizations of working in silos, but I think we community people on the ground also, unfortunately, sometimes battle on alone in isolation where when we start linking up, we become so much more effective. So that to me is quite a key focus point. So thank you for the opportunity to join today.
Community Harvest
What are you working on?
Speakers
Traci Kwaai
Walk of Remembrance
Hello, everyone. My name is Traci Kwaii and I’m a sixth generation Fisherchild from Kalk Bay. My family have lived in Kalk Bay for over 200 years. And we are still here. We’ve lived through slavery, we’ve lived through apartheid, Group Areas, Slums act, and a third of my community still lives here. Today, I lead a Walk of Remembrance, which I’ve been doing for a year and a half, and I tell stories of my community. Yeah, so they stories about the people who live in Kalk Bay. Most people come to Kalk Bay, and they just romanticize about the boats, and they go for fish and chips, at Kalkies or Olympia Cafe for coffee, and they don’t actually even realize that there’s a community that exists there, that is the first community, that Kalk Bay wouldn’t exist without them, they wouldn’t be a harbor without the fisherman. I tell stories because there’s no fish. There’s no fish left. They are not many fishermen and skippers in my community anymore. Due to… lots of things — environmental impact, quotas from government due to the fact that there’s no fish. And my cousin was just telling me the other day that it’s his last season for fishing. From here, I have recently as an extension of my work started, a snorkeling and diving club with the kids in the community, which is basically just the conduit to the work — the ocean just serves as a means to teach children about what it means to be a custodian of the sea.
After reconnection:
So the Walk of Remembrance is around telling stories of resistance, talking about stories that were erased previously. Talking about custodianship in any sense or in the in the context of knowing… in terms of coming from a brown fishing community, already always knowing for 200 years because that knowledge was passed down to us for generations, and generations, and actually, the conversations that we often need to have with someone who’s not BIPOC, which can become very uncomfortable, so also just to sit with those, that uncomfortability and engage with the story so that we can all just learn from each other, which is essentially the stories I do on the on the walk. And a lot of the stories are uncomfortable, particularly for someone who’s not a BIPOC person. But it’s so necessary and so essential.
And so the work that I’m doing with the kids around the kids is to teach them about those Indigenous Knowledges that I grew up with. My mom grew up with, that my grandmother and my great grandfather and his parents, that knowledge that’s been passed down that we that’s been raised, is to work with children and start at the very beginning, go back to where we started, which is about custodianship. And we’ve always been custodians of the ocean, actually. And so to focus on that, and the snorkeling is a great way to teach that, particularly for people for someone my age, or mothers my age in my community who haven’t had the chance to snorkel when we were young. If you can imagine living in Kalk Bay in an arm’s reach from the ocean, you can see it but you can’t touch it, you can’t swim in the beach under the tunnels, like every other BIPOC person in South Africa during apartheid. And I remember, I only was able to swim in a white beach when I was 16 years old, which wasn’t long ago.
And because of that, because I had no access as a fisherman’s child to the to parts of the ocean, which is quite close to me nearby, I didn’t get a chance to become a custodian that I should have because I was restricted by laws. And because I was restricted or parents my age restricted, our children automatically don’t have access to those areas, because we haven’t experienced it ourselves. At the age of… ripe old age of 45 was the first time I actually snorkelled as a … descendant of ancestors who are people from the sea and wind. And so to be able to give children in my community, that opportunity, as an extension of the work that I’m doing through the Walks is to me just is the reason why I do the work. And so I’m hoping to build, build a program around that and possibly take that to other coastal fishing communities in Cape Town. So that’s the end goal of but it all started with the work of humans.
Danielle Klaaf
Friends of the Rivers of Hout Bay
Basically, Hout Bay residents are really keen to clean up the river. And so… Jackie and Jemimah (Birch) formed Friends of the Rivers of Hout Bay, and another lady Linda is on board, and they are the driving force of these amazing women who have brought the City to task and involved Abdullah Parker on a daily level and all the other relevant City officials with the water and infrastructure and the city has contracted Lukhozi contractors from Johannesburg to redesign and upgrade the sewage structure in Hout Bay, especially around Imizamo Yethu where obviously the Ecoli count goes right up. The problem is the tension ponds are old, they overflow they get vandalized. The biggest problem was pollution in sewage of many rags, balls of rags, that people use as toilet paper or sanitary items. We were shocked as residents to see that that was the main blockage of the water and the storm water drains. So it’s education that is needed. It’s going to be a long process. But everybody’s on board. And people are happy to work closely with the City, report sewerage outages so that people know, so the cIty can attend to it straight away through putting a C3 (form), on the City of Cape Forum.
Shannon Hampton
International Ocean Institute
So the International Ocean Institute is 50 years old. So it’s having a bunch of different ocean literacy events around the world. And this one is in August, it’s 20 hours of content. So it’s it’s a lot of information, but it’s free, and it’s open to anyone, and we’re covering things like climate change, resource economics and blue economy, and what kind of state our ocean is in and biodiversity around South Africa. So it’s kind of a broad introduction to ocean issues.
We’re a nonprofit organization. And the reason you don’t necessarily know us is we mostly work with government officials and kind of decision makers all around Africa, trying to build capacity in ocean governance. So that’s, that’s very broad. And we cover everything from climate change to marine invasive species to maritime security, so it’s everything. And yeah, the logo is peaceful ocean, which is nice, right?
http://ioisa.org/2021-course-in-ocean-governance/
http://ioisa.org/programmes/
Estuary Management (Zandvlei)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CF5qk8wVF7U
Community Harvest
What stories would you like to amplify?
Speakers
Kathrin Krause
I’m an urban designer and landscape architect in Cape Town. And two years ago, I finished my Master’s in water engineering, because I found as a landscape architect, I knew not enough about river restoration and rehabilitation. So my master’s thesis was on the Salt River estuary. And the interesting part was that because of lockdown, I couldn’t access lots of information that I would have needed to make a proper engineering thesis. But I found lots of historical material like old maps of the river and a big part of my thesis concentrated on that.
So that is the part that I looked at: the Salt River is just a short canal that just discharges the Salt River catchment into Table Bay. And I found these remnant tributaries, left and right of them that actually span to other catchments. And then I found these maps of the old Salt River… it was unbelievable. And that actually the Salt River was an estuary that was quite important also for Table Bay and it was used… colonizers tried to travel up the river, but that it was not deep enough for that.
So I found all these maps and I scaled them and put them together to… just to understand what what had happened. Where did… what happened to the estuary? And why did it become a canal? And so the story is that in the end, it was urbanization, but also the construction of the harbor that canalised the river and restricted it and one, for me, important outcome was as well that the Salt River estuary was actually the downstream part of the Diep River catchment. So I found also these old photographs that showed the flatness of the normal estuary, and these are just the diagrams… you see how the river formed from a very undulating active river into that concrete canal in the end.
And then, as part of my thesis, obviously looked at how that could be restored. And I looked at different methodologies. So this just shows the overlay of today and 1901 — how the river was sitting on today’s urban topography.
Those are just the catchments within the City of Cape Town. And then I started looking at different informants. Also the estuary boundary, how it would look, or how it looks actually on today’s urban fabric.
I’m just going quickly through I can give you the link later to the to the study if you’re interested. And then I looked at how the stormwater system connected to the current system. And because I couldn’t find a lot of the information from the City of Cape Town, I actually walked also the area to find how the the little streams and canals were connected.
And then I looked at, but what have we lost and what what can we do? What could we bring back? And I developed three methodologies on restoration and looked at three different scenarios for how could we possibly rehabilitate this area. So those are the three scenarios. And my conclusion was that the reclamation actually of the railway yard would be the best way forward, because that would bring back a big part of the estuary, which also could help us with resilience against climate change, sea level rise, also against heat island effects for for the CBD. And that part of Cape Town. And yeah, this was just a small impression. And I did to illustrate that thank you very much.
Councillor Maryam Salie
…I just have a few things to say. And I really did not want to just not participate in this momentous occasion. We have different types of activists and it’s coming together. It’s such an amazing space to be in. I’ve worked on the Kuils, founded an organization called SUCO, which looks at… (inaudible)… in service delivery and … being an activist. One of our main focus was connecting with like minded individuals… the Kuils at the time was very highly polluted. …So going from that, going from a river that polluted where it looks like there just absolutely no hope, and from failing wastewater treatment plants to upstream pollution, it would just basically settle in our community and further down — I found myself in a space with like minded individuals and colleagues.
It’s just been a long journey, which I’m going to share with you guys as some other time, however, we went from fighting the City of Cape Twon, and actually to be frank, fighting the City of Cape Town, fighting the pollution fighting “the man” out there, and just looking for solutions. And just when we all gave up, the was some hope, where we did a project, a bioremediation project, I led that project. And I had to think outside the box, I had to come to a space where I was, like, what can I do? And how do we look at this from a different angle? How do we collaborate across different entities from activists to… from the ground, to the glass ceiling and to corporate? And it just didn’t make sense. That led me to some serious introspection and thinking took me about six months while being really ill. And just looking at how to change my mindset, and how do I look at things a little bit differently.
And it went from fighting with certain organizations to collaborating with organizations, to working with, with people that previously we did not look at, or we were not able to get in contact with, from bringing people and corporate organizations together from wastewater treatment management plants, to supervisors that previously told us there’s no pollution that’s taking place, to Mayco members… and just sitting in a space where… to us as a community, as activists and scientists sitting in one room and saying that we are now able to sit at around one table. And it’s just leading me to a space where I’m thinking that it is sometimes up to the individual as to how we do things as a collective, and rethink what we think is the correct thing to do. And just the reimagining the whole situation and that really just really reignited a whole new passion. I went from the support of many of the scientists on this group… from toxic river to now almost reasonable… Such an amazing thing to say because the Kuils was that toxic that you couldn’t come close to it.
We now have a river that is in a different space. And we are hoping to work alongside the City of Cape Town — or I am, now being in that space as well, as elected councillor of the City of Cape Town, which I do serve on the same committee as Councillor Alex Lansdowne. And I also want to mention as the only female on Councillor of the City of Cape Town, from the opposition, on that committee, [ Water Quality in Wetlands and Waterways Committee] looking from the outside in as to what I perceive should happen or could happen, to now seeing all the different bylaws in place, and so forth in understanding from things from the inside. Before I do go, I do serve also on the Water and Sanitation Portfolio Committee, which is a whole different animal, and I serve on … [inaudible] … innovation of business… where in a nutshell working with an amazing team, and just looking forward to the future. And also with the City thinking differently, and being open to some change and working with people, and also just acknowledging that there is pollution taking place, and that we are sorry about it. That is different. Thank you.
Klaudia Schachtschneider
It was actually really nice to hear you, Maryam, and what you’re describing, because I think the tone with which I’m telling my story is very similar to yours, it’s that this kind of collective action is really, really important. I work for the WWF. And in Cape Town, specifically… I’m in the freshwater team in WWF — and in Cape Town, we specifically look at groundwater. And that is obviously something that came out of the Day Zero period when there was so much groundwater drilling going on. And we were kind of starting to wonder, do we even know if that water use is sustainable or not, we have actually have no handle on it. And the City does have a handle on the areas where it is doing its bulk water extraction, but in the residential and business areas that is not within their mandate. And there were actually gaps in knowledge.
And that is really a story where we started exploring and trying to understand if we can build a monitoring network, with communities with a citizen science involvement, and volunteers to put loggers down in various neighborhoods, and to then kind of grow that data and put it onto a dashboard, where it is publicly visible for everybody. And I’m going to share that in the chat just now — that is a dashboard that is available for anyone in Cape Town to look at with the most compiled groundwater data that we can currently access given all the POPI Acts and restrictions and everything else that is complicating the kind of data field. But that’s available for everyone to see.
Understanding our groundwater in the Mother City
Practical guide to measuring the water level in your borehole
We’ve also really worked in the last two years around groundwater awareness raising, we’ve done competitions in various schools, across the cape flats, around groundwater awareness and posters. And then we’ve also involved the Green Anglicans in some kind of translation of the concept of stewardship, looking after something that you don’t own, which is a faith concept, but it can also be applied to water because water runs through everything, it’s nothing that you necessarily own. And that that kind of narrative is very similar in the religious terms, as well as in a kind of conservation term and and having that some of that groundwater information and the link to various faith, faith bases and scriptures linked up and taught into into various communities, and also involving the interfaith community in that process.
So over the last few years, the dilemma we’ve gotten to, the question I actually want to ask… so it’s amazing to hear the stories that people work on a Kuils River or Friends of Hout Bay River systems… or the Salt River — they’re all particular locations within Cape Town. We struggle with the fact that groundwater pretty much is underneath the entire city. We are able to reach community members with our awareness through various channels. But we would also love to be able — in our own kind of Table Mountain Water Source Partnership that tries to focus on groundwater issues in Cape Town — to also bring some of that decision-making power of the community into our decision-making body. But quite frankly, we’re not entirely sure how to do that because if groundwater underlies everything. How do you pick a really well-rounded community representation without having 20 people on the decision making body, so it is a dilemma we’re sitting with it we would love to solve. And I know that many of you are activists, and community representatives, and if anybody has got a golden insight or is willing to engage with us going forward as we try and explore and grapple with this over the next two years or so, I’d be much obliged, thank you.
Community Harvest
Works/Needs/Requests
Caroline Marx — #rethinkthestink; WQWW Committee
- www.watercan.org.za will be sharing information, a lot based on citizen science , and connecting communities, please have a look 🙂
Klaudia Schachtschneider — WWF South Africa; Table Mountain Water Source Partnership
- We want to grow groundwater awareness in our Cape Town communities, for volunteers to monitor with us. We are looking for community representation in our work.
- Please go visit this awesome water murals at the V&A
Bruce Snaddon — Friends of Silvermine Nature Area
- Some involvement with Councillor Alex Lansdowne Wetlands Committee CoCT in the work that FOSNA is doing in the Slivermine wetlands area. Chairperson is Dave Balfour 082 803 6436
- Specifically, I’m keen to work with my brother Chip Snaddon (artist and activist) to build a large alien wood sculpture of an otter to prompt storytelling and awareness.
- Some work that Chip and Kate Snaddon have done in education using artistic means