Traces of cholera detected in Vaal River

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That cholera has been detected in the sewage-polluted Vaal River is not surprising, according to a water expert.

Civic organisations, AfriForum and Save Ngwathe, said water samples taken from the Vaal River at Parys in the Free State on Tuesday had tested positive for cholera. An accredited laboratory took the water samples at different locations under the supervision of a water specialist, they said.

“The first water sample taken at the outlet of the Parys waterworks was not contaminated with cholera. The second water sample taken from a residential house in Parys tested negative for cholera but was infected with E. coli.

“The third water sample was taken in the Vaal River, approximately 10m downstream from a manhole that has been pouring sewage into the river for some time. It is this very water sample that is contaminated with cholera and E. coli. It is extremely worrying that the withdrawal point for Vredefort’s water is only 1km from the sewage spill. It is precisely in Vredefort where there are also confirmed cases of cholera and where a resident died from this virus.” 

The results of the sampling “further proves that the Vaal River is indeed infected with cholera. There are several places where the raw sewage flows into the river due to infrastructure that is burnt out or is simply not available, load-shedding and the fact that there is no emergency assistance such as generators or emergency pumps.”

By Friday morning, 21 people had died in the cholera outbreak in Hammanskraal, north of Pretoria and one in Free State.

Highly contagious disease

Craig Sheridan, the Claude Leon Foundation Chair in Water Research and the director of the Centre in Water Research and Development at the School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies at Wits University, said the mechanism of transmission of cholera is through contaminated faecal matter. 

“It’s  highly contagious disease. Basically, if you’re using a toilet system and you have cholera, your poo gets into the toilet system and goes to the wastewater treatment plant. It’s not news to any of us that it’s not necessarily going through the wastewater treatment plant, whatever that treatment plant is, but that it is bypassing it directly into the river,” Sheridan said.

“We all know this is the case. Some of the plants are totally non-functional. We know because we’ve got the Green Drop report. If the treatment plants are not working, any faecal matter going into them is slipping through and going into the rivers, which means any of these viruses or bacteria that cause disease are also slipping through the systems.”

Sheridan lives in an area slightly north of Parktown in Johannesburg. 

“We often see the sewers are overflowing. So, they block up, they overflow and they go into the stormwater system and the stormwater system goes directly into the river, so it’s the same story. 

“You have untreated faecal matter that gets into the rivers directly through either the wastewater treatment systems or through the leaky sewer systems and blocked sewer systems. It doesn’t really matter where we are anymore, this is impacting us all equally … whether you’re a  poor person in Hammanskraal or a really rich person in Sandton.”

Boil, bleach 

However, Sheridan said the risk to human health of having cholera in rivers is “not as high as people think” because this is raw water, which is abstracted and treated for drinking purposes. 

“We know Rand Water is working or else we would all be sick … What we’re having is a recontamination problem on the freshwater system somewhere or we’re having a transmission problem between people somewhere. My gut feeling is that it’s both at the moment,” Sheridan said, noting, however, that he doesn’t have the data to support those theories.

Those communities downstream reliant on the Vaal River for their drinking water, “they do have to be concerned about cholera”, he said. “The answer is a teaspoon of unscented bleach – Jik – in 20 litres of water. If you do that, your water will be safe to drink. It’s literally that simple.” 

Water should first be boiled for at least one minute “but if you’ve got no electricity, how the hell do you boil water? This is the complex interplay unfolding at the moment. So, each of these systems is not particularly hard to function, it’s not hard to treat water to drinkable, it’s not hard to purify wastewater to discharge limits but when all of the systems start to fail at the same time and in the same place this is the consequence — that people die.

“A lot of people are dying and they don’t have to,” Sheridan said, explaining how “a teaspoon of bleach can save your life. It’s the message we need to get across to everyone.”

According to AfriForum and Save Ngwathe, the department of water and sanitation (DWS) must “actively intervene”.

A video supplied by Karien Viljoen from Save Ngwathe at the manhole in question appears to show that even blood is flowing out of it. The DWS and the municipality are aware of this manhole overflowing, the civic organisations said.

They appealed to residents of all the towns in the Ngwathe local municipality to not drink tap water before it has been boiled. “I sincerely hope that the authorities, and especially the DWS, realise the vital importance of this problem and intervene at the incompetent municipality.” 

Viljoen told the Mail & Guardian how the area had long battled with poor water quality. 

“They don’t maintain the sewage works, the sewage is now flowing into the Vaal River, not from today, not from a week ago, many years. It is unbearable. It’s not only at the sewage works, it is in the community, in their houses, in the living areas of people.”

Local residents, she said, are careful to use the municipal water. 

“If you’re poor and you have to buy water or food, you will get any source of water and then buy food because your stomach is the louder one. The people here are very anxious because not everyone can afford to buy water, to buy chemicals to treat your water. It’s not your responsibility, it’s the responsibility of the politicians at this stage and that’s the problem, politicians only think of themselves, they don’t think about anybody else.”

‘More teeth’

Wisane Mavasa, spokesperson for the DWS, said the Vaal River is a source of raw water. “So, as a department, what we encourage members of the public to do is to ensure they do not drink untreated water, and if so, they have a suspicion of the water, that it is not of good quality, they need to follow the department of health guidelines to ensure it is of drinkable standards.”

Her department, she said, acknowledged the fact that the state of water services in local government is dire. 

“The shortcomings are a result of poor governance and institutional capacity of those municipalities, hence we are exploring what we’re exploring now. Yesterday [at the National Ministerial Water Sector Sustainability Symposium], we met with water experts from other countries — Denmark as well as Kenya — to brainstorm and them sharing ideas of how they’re doing it in their countries.

“This is so we can look at whether it’s things we can do as South Africa, things that we can adopt and also in terms of reforms, to inform policy amendments and, where possible, legislative reforms, in terms of giving it more teeth for us to be able to get in where it’s necessary to save lives as the situation in Hammanskraal dictates.”

This story will be updated if comment is received from the Ngwathe local municipality.