Buffalo City residents, who found their homes and cars underwater during the storms from June 1-2, fear the approaching rainy season, as stormwater drains across the city remain unmaintained and blocked.
Residents, businesses and motorists in Cambridge, West Bank, Vincent, Quigney, Beacon Bay, Greenfields, Nahoon and Stirling will find themselves mired in water once again when the next deluge comes, given the proliferation of unmaintained, blocked, and broken stormwater drains.
One Sunrise-on-Sea resident said nothing had been as traumatic as being forced to watch powerlessly while her home flooded with water in June because of the blocked stormwater drain on the opposite street. The flooding has caused R100,000 in damages and destroyed her daughter’s home business, resulting in loss of income for the family and a huge knock to her daughter’s aspirations.
The resident said: “She [her daughter] said to me she doesn’t want to live here anymore because when the weather changes, we get so nervous. At just the sight of a cloud, we have wheelbarrows and gumboots on standby because you never know just how bad it’s going to be this time.”
Her neighbours, living right next to the blocked stormwater drain, had only minutes to rescue their most important valuables before the water washed, knee-deep, into their home and swimming pool. The estimated cost of the damage stands at R250,000.
They said: “The stormwater drain was only partially open when the big rains of June 2 hit and within a short space of time, our whole property was flooded. There was damage inside the property and the pool will have to be replaced.
“BCMM has ignored all our calls made to them for assistance to unblock the stormwater drain and our fear is that if a lot of rain happened now, we would be underwater again.
“The flooding is becoming more frequent and more disastrous because of climate change and aside from stormwater drains being blocked, the existing drainage infrastructure in our area cannot keep up with the frequency and magnitude of present day storms.
“We live in a lovely area in a city with so much potential and if we can just get better services then living here would be perfect.”
In January 2022 there was heavy rain shower that caused flooding across the metro exacerbated by the unmaintained storm water drainage system.
This prompted the municipality to approach the department of co-operative governance and traditional affairs (Cogta) for funding to address the blocked drains.
However, in the 19 months since then, the funding has not been forthcoming, and no steps have been taken to attend to the drains.
Councillor Sue Bentley has been agitating the municipality to develop a viable stormwater maintenance plan and submit quarterly reports to council indicating the number of stormwater inlets that have been repaired, where these inlets are and how many meters/kilometres of stormwater drainage system has been unblocked and maintained.
Bentley may receive feedback on the progress in October.
Bentley said: “There is almost no street sweeping programme in the metro and where there is, most workers sweep the sand and rubbish into the stormwater drainage system which aggravates the blocking of these drains.
“All over the metro, one will notice vegetation growing out of the stormwater drains, which is a clear indication that the drain is completely silted up and blocked.
“There are flooding incidents in areas where it did not previously flood because of the lack of maintenance of the storm water drainage system.
“Unless BCMM is intentional about the maintenance of the storm water drainage system, with climate change and changing rain patterns, flooding will become the norm and could increase claims against the municipality for negligence and damages.”
Consulting Engineer SA’s (CESA) Chris Campbell said that not only is preventative maintenance important to mitigate flooding, but also because when stormwater infrastructure remains unmaintained, it can become completely dysfunctional, which will then require costly upgrades or replacement to the system.
He added that dysfunctional infrastructure created a risk to public safety as well as to properties.
Campbell said: “It does not help for municipal departments to be reactive and then address flooding after the fact, as the costs and risks thereof are enormous.
Ongoing maintenance should be carried out.
“There is enough information gathered by now to know when you will be going into the rainy season and with climate change effects, with storms being more frequent and severe.
“It becomes all the more necessary to do preventative maintenance as the realities are also that infrastructure that has been installed 30 years ago, may not only be inadequate in the face of climate change, but when these are adequately maintained, they are rendered completely dysfunctional.
“Appointing competent people such as civil engineering practitioners with the requisite knowledge and experience of stormwater systems planning, implementation and maintenance is critical.
“But the problem often could also be that even when you have such resources in place, they are disempowered by other parties in the decision making process, such as supply chain management, bid committees and all the way up to MECS’s voting on budget allocations and reallocations, which then prevents the technical teams from being able to secure adequate resources to execute such maintenance management to prevent such instances of flooding.
“Many of these parties only seem to be sensitive to the need for providing such support to the technical teams after an incident has occurred.
“There is therefore a greater need for having competent people who appreciate the risks related to their decisions at all stages in the resource chain if we are going to win this battle of understanding the responsibility for the managing of the entire lifecycle of our infrastructure assets.
“Communities need to be sensitised to the fact that discarding rubbish and littering as a start, is not only unhygienic but that these simply then get carried by the rainwater into the drains and eventually lead to these stormwater drains getting blocked.
“The excessive littering makes the need for more frequent maintenance, which may then further limit the scarce resources allocated in the municipality.
“It is also incumbent on the municipality to know the state of its stormwater system, assess the risk areas and proceed with planning and implementing mitigating strategies to address the likelihood and severity of the stormwater drainage systems failing that could pose a threat to public safety.”
Campbell advised that where such expertise may be lacking in the municipality, there is a need to approach private sector consulting engineering companies.
