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- A Stuijt
- Retired South African medical journalist, ex-Sunday Times of Johannesburg.
Rivers of human shit are killing off Kruger’s animals
08:15 | 
Posted by
A Stuijt |
South Africans also will have to start drinking through individual LifeStraw drinking water filters to remain healthy…
July 25 2009 – The ANC-run municipalities’ collapsing sewerage treatment plants are dumping so much human faeces into the Kruger Park’s rivers, that its precious wildlife – even the crocodiles, are being killed off, writes Sunday Times journalist Bobby Jordan. Soon, there will be no reason for tourists to visit the world-famous African wildlife reserve any longer: the animals are being killed off not only by poachers, but even more by rivers of human shit which are flowing through this once so pristine habitat… To read this entire story access the following URL:
- http://www.thetimes.co.za/PrintEdition/Article.aspx?id=1039724
- For crocodile die-offs read: http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/kruger-crocodiles725.html#cr
CAPE TOWN PARLIAMENT. “Several municipalities are to blame for sewage spills that cause human waste to be flushed downstream towards the Kruger park,” minister of water and environmental affairs Buyelwa Sonjica was quoted as saying in SA parliament this week. Finally – a South African government official has now openly admitted the horrendous extent of this completely avoidable, deadly pollution problem in a written reply to questions in the national assembly this week.
‘Dilution factor from rainfall no longer can clean this filthy water…’
On December 6 2008, Censorbugbear-reports already wrote about the courageous Dr Anthony Turton, left, the country’s top water-research expert at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, CSIR, and that he was ‘suspended from his job’ a month earlier for trying to warn in a government report, which he would have read at an international clean-water conference, that ‘South Africa was facing very rapid socio-economic collapse due to the heavily polluted South African fresh-water resources.” The rivers and streams were becoming increasingly clogged and difficult to clean because of the mountains of mostly plastic and chemical waste being dumped into them – but even worse was the fact that the water was increasingly becoming polluted with human faeces at very dangerous levels, he warned.
Less than 450mm annual rainfall cannot clean up this mess:
Turton warned last year in this (banned) water-pollution document that due to the fact that South Africa gets so little rainfall, as does all of southern Africa; and also now is rapidly polluting with faeces and chemicals all of its scarce water-resources - the 'dilution factor' washing pollutants from the water with the country's less than 450mm annual rainfall, no longer exists. The chemical and faecal waste levels have simply become far too high in SA open-water supplies to still get cleaned up by any annual rains. Even crocodiles - creatures with the oldest and best immune systems on the planet -- are now dying of this by eating polluted fishes in the rivers flowing through the Kruger National Wildlife Park. His banned report: http://blat.co.za/KeynoteAddressCSIR2008.pdf
Read report, more details here and here:
181 of the 232 municipal sewerage plants have failed:
Turton warned that this ‘overwhelming’ faecal pollution of the country’s preciously sparse fresh-water supplies – above and below the ground -- was mainly due to the near-total collapse of the 181 of the country's 232 municipal waste-water purification plants, all sited along the countrys network of rivers and dams. Municipal purification plants are daily pouring thousands of tons of human and chemical waste directly into the country's fresh-water streams asnd rivers, he warned. Taxpayers countrywide complain of falling ill and even dying from drinking the municipal water, he warned.
9,000 municipal sewerage plant engineers forced to quit because they were white men:
And while Turton didn’t write this fact -- other research published on Sept 9 2008, by top investigative journalist Louise Flanagan of The Star newspaper, also showed that the water treatment plants across the country were so badly run by unqualified personnel, that the Water Research Commission has had to resort to drawing up a very basic, cartoon-like manual to teach operators with symbols instead of in writing, how to make their drinking water safer. A countrywide survey among 181 small water-treatment plants in all but two provinces found an alarming situation, Flanagan wrote, namely that all these plants ‘were being run by people with very low educational standards’ -- some could barely read, hence the plan for the cartoon-manual -- and none had any engineering skills.
- White men barred from jobs:
- This deadly health danger was brought about mainly by the fact that more than 9,000 municipal posts have fallen vacant after some 80% of the country's qualified engineers have emigrated since 1994 -- these 'paler-skinned' South African male citizens lost their jobs only due to the ANC government's black-economic empowerment laws.
Turton, as the top water-scientist at the Council for Science and Industrial Research, has since resigned. Read reports here and here:
- Turton resignation: http://www.news24.com/Beeld/Suid-Afrika/0,,3-975_2434440,00.html
A month later, the parliamentary joint working group meeting called on the ANC-regime to declare a water emergency. They didn’t. http://censorbugbear-reports.blogspot.com/2008/10/sa-water-is-becoming-far-too-dangerous.html
Previous water affairs minister refused to admit faecal pollution problems:
However the previous administration’s minister of water affairs, Lindiwe Hendricks, that’s the militantly-angry lady on the far left in this Volksblad newspaper picture, adamantly refused to admit that the country’s growing water-borne health problems could in any way be due to the overwhelming faecal pollution of the country’s water supplies – i.e. that this could in any way be blamed on any of the ANC-run municipal sewerage plants. This female minister instead, was only furious about a white farmer ‘stealing river water’, and ordered front-end loaders to stop this excess food-producer from irrigating his crops… She blamed farmers and businesses for the atrocious condition of the country's rivers and streams and went about dealing with it by personally travelling around in her blue-light motorcade to issue summonses to businesses and farmers for 'stealing water from the rivers' - even when they had all the necessary permits. The Afrikaans-language Volksblad journalist Frans Coetzee reported from Douglas in the Northern Cape at that time, that Hendricks was ' furious ' when she saw how six (black) diamond-mine concessioneers had, according to the water affairs minister, been 'illegally sucking water from the Vaal River.' The journalist wrote that this former ANC-minister clearly took this alleged water-theft as a personal affront. She was described as being 'horrified, angry and dismayed' during her flash-inspection of six diamond-diggings and ordered the regional head of the water affairs department Louis Snyder, far right on this picture, to read the riot act to the astonished and dismayed Pico Diamonds company's manager Philip Pikwane (second-right).
- A week before that, she had also targetted a commercial farm in Limpopo, accusing this major excess-food-producer of 'stealing' water by creating a dam – he needed to do this, he explained to the news media, so that he could first purify the water from the (dangerously-polluted) Crocodile river before irrigating his crops. She said nothing about the pollution – instead, she was only irate about the farmer 'stealing river water'. So while Hendricks was blaming private businesses for all of the country's water-woes, the underlying pollution problems raised by Dr Turton were not being addressed. http://www.news24.com/Die_Volksblad/Nuus/0,,5-83_2432593,00.html
2009: ‘Yes, we do have a pollution problem…’
![ScientistsWorriedAboutDangerousHuman FaecalPollutionKrugerWater[1]_thumb[1]](http://lh3.ggpht.com/_ZL3Kngb81qo/SmwLxeTFm9I/AAAAAAAAUpg/hnY4WtYqFlY/s1600-h/ScientistsWorriedAboutDangerousHuman%20FaecalPollutionKrugerWater%5B1%5D_thumb%5B1%5D%5B5%5D.jpg "ScientistsWorriedAboutDangerousHuman FaecalPollutionKrugerWater[1]_thumb[1]")
Picture: Beeld newspaper reported in October last year that Kruger Park scientists were searching the river systems and finding many dead crocodiles.
However finally this week, the current administration has had the courage to admit that there might just be a problem – but that they were trying to deal with it. This admission came after two long weeks of violent protest actions in scores of municipalities countrywide, where millions of residents were living with this filth because local municipalities were failing in their so-named ‘service delivery…’
The new minister admitted in parliament that the dangerously high level of human faeces in the rivers, which scientists measure by testing for E. coli bacteria. is caused by sewerage spills from municipal facilities. She’s lodged notices to eight (recently renamed) ANC-ruled municipalities to stop these sewerage spills and clean up their act: Delmas, Bushbuckridge, Govan Mbeki, Mbombela, Nkomazi, Emakhazeni, Kungwini and Greater Sekhukhune, as well as the Vhembe and Greater Tzaneen municipalities in Limpopo. It’s not known if these municipalities would be able to do so, since most of the country’s skilled sewerage-plant engineers were fired years ago.
The minister admitted that a downstream point on the Sabie River of the Kruger Park showed E. coli levels of 727 cfu/100ml in January and more than 1000 cfu/100ml in March. National water standards stipulate that the E. coli level should be zero. Other rivers were similarly contaminated, although of course due to various rainfall, levels also varied widely throughout the year.
The polluted water has also turned the entire region into an endemic cholera area, where people and their livestock are often falling deadly ill, with hundreds of people dying of cholera each year now. People and livestock even fall ill from well water which is being drawn from the acquifers deep below the surface.
Once pristine rivers — including the Crocodile, Olifants and Sabie — all show dangerously high levels of human waste contamination. The affected rivers flow through crowded Highveld towns such as Nelspruit and Sabie into the Kruger National Park -- where recent “ mysterious “ crocodile deaths have highlighted the problem of contaminated water. Now the minister has warned that livestock may also be affected in severely polluted areas.
Picture: The problem is countrywide: KwaZulu-Natal rivers are also showing identical levels of pollution, as this picture by Durban photographer Whitey Smith shows. He’s been campaigning against the growing filth and pollution in KwaZulu-Natal for years, bombarding people with CDs filled with his photographs showing this massive pollution problem...
Phillip Owen from the ecological-watch organisation GeaSphere, based in Mpumalanga, said the situation in the Kruger Park ‘is a disgrace,’ Jordan writes in the Sunday Times; “That’s supposed to be our premier wildlife area, but it is impacted by the mismanagement of our rivers.”
The management of the Kruger National Park has of course been ringing the alarm bell about the situation for several years now – many experts there are convinced that these rivers of human faeces flowing through the park are directly responsible for the crocodile die-offs ‘in a mystery disease epidemic’.
It’s important to point out that crocodiles have the oldest and most efficient immune system on the planet. So if they are dying from this vile, crappy water, what chance do human beings have to survive this filth?
Taxpayers countrywide have for the past few years, been complaining bitterly about their water quality, and township residents last week carried posters complaining that they had to ‘live like pigs’…
South Africa's most famous beaches along the Indian Ocean, stretching from Port Elizabeth in the south all the way to northern KZN and including Durban, last year also lost their international 'blue-water' certificates issued by international tourism experts -- because the water and the beaches had simply become far too filthy. And several international wine experts also commented that 'South African wines had become very smelly...'
Some really horrid little little beasties were reported in the municipal drinking water by the residents in the Indian-ocean seaside hamlet of Sunrise-on-Sea near East London in October last year.. There were thousands of “mysterious parasites” swimming around in their drinking water and people were falling ill from them. Residents said the problem had by then already been around for nearly seven weeks and complained that the municipal sewerage plant was to blame. Resident Marlene van Brakel, photograph, said they were increasingly worried that they might have drunk the water containing the parasites long before these were discovered. She said they had contacted various Buffalo City departments and Amatola Water officials but “nobody seemed to care the least bit,’ she reportedly said, adding: “It’s definitely a health risk and a number of people had been to the doctor with stomach problems and running tummies.”Van Brakel said her family started to boil the water since spotting the creatures in the water.
Municipal waste-water officials can barely read: and only tested for E.coli...
Mrs van Brakel said that municipal officials had claimed that they had been 'testing the water - which the offcials said came out negative.' Residents were told that they 'could continue drinking the water'. She warned however that the officials carrying out these tests were unqualified and that they only tested for micro-organisms, but not for any parasites. “The water is not drinkable, apparently they tested it for E.coli but they never tested it for the worms, so how can they say this water is drinkable?” she asked. Residents said they were upset with the municipality’s lack of response to the water problem. Describing their situation as “disgusting and a health hazard”, another resident, Belinda Torr, said she stopped drinking the water. She had made arrangement with a local farmer to provide her with water instead. Buffalo City Municipality spindoctor Samkelo Ngwenya denied all this back then.
Hundreds of babies died from water-pollution:
Some Eastern Cape water 'purification' plants -- including the one at Sunrise-on-Sea with last year’s still-mysterious parasite-infestation -- indeed were so badly-run that about hundreds of babies's deaths in a 'diarrhoea outbreak' at two local hospitals last summer were blamed on the dangerous water quality... with doctors and nurses warning that many babies were sickening and dying at the Sterkspruit and Barkly East hospitals-- from totally preventable water-borne infections.
SOUTH AFRICANS MUST CLEAN THEIR OWN DRINKING WATER:
With South Africans reporting countrywide that they are also increasingly suffering from a vast variety of stomach and intestinal ailments due to the dangerous quality of their municipal drinking water - help is on the horizon from a non-profit organisation in tiny little Denmark, where an innovative engineer has designed an individual water-filter, the LifeStraw. Danish businessman/engineer Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen, developed the Life Straw Water Purifier, left, and is selling it at non-profit rates to third-world countries. it contains a filter which filters out cholera fibrio and most certainly all the water-parasites.
Jimmy Carter Charity Center distributed 23-m LifeStraws:
In fact it's so effective for communities suffering from dangerous water-conditions at household level that the Jimmy Carter Charity Center in the USA has already distributed 23-million to third-world communities to prevent water-borne infections in individuals by the end of 2008. The blue reusable metal pipe used by the child above has a fabric textile screen filter and allows people to drink directly from contaminated water. It costs about $4 (R43) each and has a total purification volume of 700 litres before it needs a new filter. (Each human being needs to drink at least five litres a day to survive.) Vestergaard Frandsen also has a larger, stationary LifeStraw Family version that will provide clean drinking water for up to 18 months for families. Made of polystyrene, the 31cm long, 2.9cm diametre, 150g tube, which looks like a flute and can be hung around the neck, uses filters to kill or remove 99.9 percent of waterborne bacteria and 98.7 percent of waterborne viruses according to laboratory testing. It requires no electricity nor spare parts during its year-long lifetime - you merely have to suck up the water yourself... It contains a halogenated resin that kills bacteria and viruses on contact. http://www.lifestraw.com/
sources and other reports:
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