Cape Town - The City’s Department of Water and Sanitation is looking into businesses based in Paarden Eiland, for allegedly dumping “fat” down its sewer system, severely damaging service infrastructure.

This comes almost two weeks after the City started clearing excessive fat that blocked a section of two 250mm rising main sewers in Auckland Street, which was serviced in early September.

Water and sanitation mayco member, Zahid Badroodien, said teams conducted a manhole-to-manhole investigation from the Auckland Street pump station to the Carlisle Street pump station, once they detected the Auckland Street pump station was unable to operate at full capacity.

“That’s when they discovered that a large section of the sewer line was completely blocked up with excessive fats.

“Our operational teams acted quickly once the cause of the blockage was determined.

“While there may be no significant visual improvement at this stage, businesses are assured that City teams are making every effort to clear this excessive fat blockage in the shortest time possible.

“It’s not an easy task to etch away through volumes of hardened fat, blocking flow in the sewer pipes,” Badroodien said.

Paarden Eiland ward councillor, Fabian Ah-Sing, said the department had a suspect in mind who could be behind the sewer disaster.

Ah-Sing said while he was not entirely privy to the progress regarding the tracing of the suspect, he was keen to find the identity of the perpetrator who had caused undue discourse in the neighbourhood.

“Some people think that if there's a blockage, everything else goes on as normal.

“But that’s not how it works, some blockages can't be cleared immediately and end up overflowing, which then affects our local businesses.

“We have a team that goes out and clears blockages regularly every day and cleans up.

“I know the City is working to deal with this, but we need to remember that such destructive incidents take away from our function as a community.

“I urge residents not to sit idly or contribute to the problem by dumping things down our pipes. The damaged pipes now have to be replaced and cannot merely be fixed,” Ah-Sing said.

nomalanga.tshuma@inl.co.za

Cape Argus