Lin Tancrel was relaxing at a braai when her body felt strange — her stomach swelled and turned rock hard.
A week later she was in hospital with a bacterial infection she is still fighting four weeks later.
Her medical team believe she is a victim of circumstance — an ill-timed swim in the sea. “I spent four days in hospital last week, a gastroscopy and a biopsy was done by two surgeons and they suggested that I may have been exposed to this bacteria while swimming in Camps Bay tidal pool — which I had done five days before I started to show symptoms,” said Tancrel.
“My father was here from Durban ... I took him to the tidal pool because I love swimming there. Somehow I basically swallowed poo,” she said.
Her father also suffered an upset stomach, reinforcing Tancrel’s suspicions of contamination.
Cape Town says its coastal waters are “excellent”, a claim backed by independent water quality test results published online, updated weekly for the 30 most popular beaches.
Camps Bay beach was recently awarded Blue Flag status by the Wildlife & Environment Society of South Africa.
“The results show consistently high water quality at this beach throughout the year,” the city said. Pollution events were exceptional and the result of stormwater runoff, it said. This usually happened in the high-rainfall winter months, not summer.
The test results are cold comfort to Tancrel and others like Underwater Africa director Cleeve Robertson, who took a sample of Camps Bay seawater that indicated waste levels 10 times higher than the allowable limit.
Robertson swam 200m out to sea into a band of visibly polluted water to tell a story often aired on social media as paddlers share pictures of floating sewerage.
“They [the city] clearly have an objective of trying to make it look like everything is squeaky clean,” said Robertson.
Critics of the test results include some scientists who insist the city is not testing regularly or vigorously enough, thereby creating a false sense of security.
“The biggest problem is the trust deficit, so the public is sceptical, for good reason,” said water scientist Anthony Turton.
“Municipalities must provide quality assurance to ensure that the protocols are rigidly applied. To the best of my knowledge, no coastal municipality complies with this. At best they provide random samples, taken using an undefined protocol, and sent only to one laboratory, without any forensic audit of the custodial chain of evidence.”
Prof Leslie Petrik of the University of the Western Cape’s chemistry department believes tests should be done for E. coli in coastal waters.
But the city tests instead for another strain of faecal bacteria, enterococci, which it says is “the gold standard” for testing.
According to the US environmental protection agency, enterococci tests are better for marine water, while E. coli tests are appropriate for fresh water.
Municipalities must provide quality assurance to ensure that the protocols are rigidly applied. To the best of my knowledge, no coastal municipality complies with this
— Water scientist Anthony Turton
Underlying the water quality row is disagreement over the impact of three marine outfall pipes that annually discharge about 22-million m³ of untreated sewerage. Two are off the Atlantic seaboard — Greenpoint and Camps Bay — and the third is in Hout Bay. The city insists the discharge is necessary, safe and on a par with other coastal cities.
Several independent studies over the past six years had found the deep water discharge was effective in diluting potentially harmful sewerage impacts, the city said in a detailed response.
“The city is working towards investigating the construction of new wastewater works to replace the outfalls as part of its long-term infrastructure plan,” said Zahid Badroodien, member of the mayoral committee for water & sanitation.
Some water sports enthusiasts do not agree that the discharge dissipates before reaching the surface. “As a pilot, I continually see the plumes [from the outfall pipes] on the surface, quite often blowing back onto shore,” said Jean Tresfon, also an active paddler and diver.
In KwaZulu-Natal, recent tests have shown a vast improvement in eThekwini beach water quality, but the end of the city’s testing partnership with an NPO and an independent water analysis firm, Talbot Laboratories, has sparked concern about the reliability of current test results.
High E. coli levels after the April 2022 floods forced the closure of popular beaches, resulting in millions lost in tourism revenue.
EThekwini has 21 of 23 swimming beaches open.
“Over the past three months, anecdotal evidence suggests some improvement in water quality, likely due to decreased rainfall and municipal efforts,” said community activist Pete Graham.
Municipality spokesperson Mduduzi Ncalane said: “Testing is conducted fortnightly. Additionally, daily monitoring is carried out at all hotspots that could potentially impact the beaches.”
But Graham is unhappy with the frequency of testing.
“Contaminant levels can fluctuate rapidly due to factors such as rainfall, sewage spills, or increased human activity. Ideally, testing should be conducted at least weekly, or even daily during high-risk periods, to ensure public safety and timely responses to pollution events.”
He said there were “valid public concerns” in 2022 when discrepancies between eThekwini’s results and those of the NPO Adopt-a-River, which used independent samplers Talbot.
The city responded by forging an arrangement with Adopt-a-River to do joint testing. The NPO would send its samples to Talbot for analysis while eThekwini continued using its own lab. But this arrangement has lapsed.
“I cannot confirm whether the city’s current testing methods are scientifically robust or if they meet internationally recognised standards,” Graham said. “Ideally, the municipality should provide detailed, transparent reports on sampling locations, frequency, testing parameters and methodologies. This information should be accessible to the public for scrutiny.”
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.