GEORGE NEWS - A long-time resident of Victoria Bay is worried about the handling of sewage from a newly renovated building located on the western side of the Vic Bay access road, just below Seabreeze Cabanas.

The Garden Route District Municipality (GRDM) recently refurbished the building which is now to serve as a booking office for its camping sites there.

According to the resident, who wants to remain anonymous, the building was erected in the 1960s to house a caretaker. It was then serviced by a sewage pit, and was never connected to the Victoria Bay sewerage system.

"Complaints of sewage contamination started in around the '90s when the caretaker - probably a new one by then - and his wife and children all moved in there. Vic Bay residents suspected that the pit had become insufficient, causing sewage overflow and leading to the contamination of the water exiting from the storm water pipe onto the beach."

George Herald recently reported on complaints of sewage flowing along the western side of the road down a furrow to the beach.

However, George Municipality at the time said that it does not have sewage infrastructure on that side of the road and the "water" in the furrow was coming from a historical fountain on the embankment. 

A regular surfer had reported that there had been squatters in the building and he suspected that the sewage contamination was coming from there. GRDM denied that there had been squatters.

The newspaper visited the site while renovations to the building were underway. New sewage outlets had then just been installed at the building. According to a worker on site, these had been connected to an existing underground pipe. Another employee said the fire brigade had been there to "flush" the pipeline to test it. 

He could not confirm where the pipeline leads to. What was noticeable was a constant trickling of water from along the length of the embankment below the building into the furrow that runs down towards the beach. In a subsequent query to George Municipality and GRDM, the newspaper mentioned that this amount of water could possibly have been as a result of the fire brigade flushing the pipe.

We also asked the municipalities where the sewage from this building is flowing to.

George municipal communications head Chantèl Edwards, responded, "According to our Civil Engineering Department, this building is connected straight onto an existing 65mm-diameter sewer gravity line without a septic tank. 

"George Municipality suggests that they [GRDM] install a new conservancy tank for this building and use the existing sewer connection for an overflow in case of emergency, thus avoiding blockages on the existing sewer gravity line. Note, building plans would be required for such an amendment."

According to Herman Pieters, head of GRDM's communications section, the George Municipality's comment was forwarded to the relevant officials in the municipality and their feedback is being awaited.

Victoria Bay is one of the most popular holiday destinations in the Garden Route, especially among surfers.

George Municipality responded as follows to a follow-up query from the newspaper to obtain clarity as to where the sewage leads to:

The building connects to the septic tanks for the campsite, which in turn connects with one single pipe (i.e. no joins) to the 65mm asbestos cement pipe (at a manhole). I.e. the caretaker's building does not have its own septic tank.

The 65mm asbestos pipe is located in the road service i.e under the tar. This sewer line does not run along the embankment (as we pointed out previously) and is located towards the centre of the road under the tar.

The water seen running down the road close to the embankment has been identified as coming from a reservoir located above the camping site. This water which is groundwater (brown) runs to the stormwater channel. The leak has been reported to Civils and will be addressed.

The 65mm asbestos cement pipe located in the road service then runs down to the pump station located at the beach. This pump station has a submersible pump which automatically kicks in when it reaches a certain level and which then pumps everything up to a larger pump station located to the left of the road as you are leaving Victoria Bay and that larger pump station is emptied on a daily basis by sewer tankers.

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