current weather status
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View myPMB's current weather status Includes readings for the past week |
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*** Welcome to my PMB blog, the umpteenth! ***
The Nonsuch Road Sewer
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I have walked up and down Nonsuch Road (near the top of Town Bush Road) most days of the year in the evening with our dogs for the past 16 years. It is a pleasant walk on the outskirts of Pietermaritzburg that follows the course of the Cascades Stream up the valley past the lower entrance to Queen Elizabeth Park and ends at the entrance gate to African Enterprise. When I first set out the road was with the exception of the first 800 meters where it is bounded by the Waldorf complex, basically a tunnel through undergrowth, most alien. Over time Waltdorf has cleared the side of the road opposite the complex and that section at the beginning of the road is a popular walk amongst the local residents.
Beyond the complex the road dips to a point where it crosses the Cascades Stream by means of a drift. Beyond the drift the road runs parallel to the stream until it crosses two major water pipelines that come from the D V Harris Water Treatment Plant. Just beyond that the road also runs to one of the Queen Elizabeth Park boundaries until it reaches the African Enterprise gate.
While walking over the past several years I have on occasion smelt what I thought was raw sewage in the vicinity of the drift. While it bothered me, I never did anything about it. Not until I met a friend along the road in October last year who asked me whether I had noticed the overflowing sewer in the section of road beyond the drift. He then related how at the beginning of that year he had noticed while reading a Duzi Canoe Marathon "State of the Duzi" in the Witness news paper, that the Cascades Stream was not the cleanest of streams. He then paid more attention to the banks of the stream during his walks and it was not long before he found a sewer manhole that was discharging raw sewage into the Cascades Stream. He reported the overflowing sewer manhole to both the uMsunduzi Municipality, and the Ward 25 Councillor's office not once, but several times. Nothing happened.
I then also sought out the leaking sewer manhole and also reported it to the uMsunduzi Municipality. I also reported it to the Duzi uMngeni Conservation Trust (DUCT), as I had previously read an article in which DUCT encouraged folk who lived near sewer mains that sewer manholes that were not that visible to passing traffic, to occasionally check the sewer manholes on such a sewer main for leaks. Basically a good idea.
When nothing had happened by December, I reported the leak to the uMsunduzi Municipality again. After a week with no action, I reported it to the Ward 25 representative again. The only thing that has happened since then is that I have ended up gaining the impression that it is my responsibility to keep on reporting the leaking sewer manhole until it is attended to. I beg to differ, in fact once should have been enough way back in February when my friend first did so.
So what has happened since I first reported the leak is that DUCT has arrived on the scene, and is clearing the aliens from the banks of the stream. While this and their other work is commendable, I sincerely hope that their efforts along Nonsuch Road produce a lasting effect. What is extraordinarily ironic, is that the one area that has not been cleared by DUCT so far, is been the one that bounds the sewer leak. They also say that the new President of South Africa has plenty of problems. The reality is that he doe not know the half of it.
 2019011310Sewer.jpg *
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 2019020706NonsuchRoad.jpg *
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 2019021470Bank.jpg *
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 2019021550Bank.jpg *
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 2019021610Eradication.jpg *
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 2019021620Trash.jpg *
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 2019021660Bank.jpg *
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 2019021810Bush.jpg *
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If you have any comments, corrections, suggestions or plain criticism, I would appreciate it if you would communicate the same to me.
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Google+ | www.robdempster.com |
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