Ramon Di Clemente, winner of SA’s first-ever Olympic rowing medal in 2004, used to drink the water at Roodeplaat Dam, scooping it up in his hand between training sets.
He wouldn’t dare try that now on the 403-hectare mass of water to the north of Pretoria, which is scheduled to host the 2023 world masters regatta that could boost local coffers by an estimated R70m.
But organisers must dodge three potential bullets when World Rowing conducts an inspection in September this year.
One is the water hyacinth, a long-standing problem that in two years has twice trashed the 2km rowing course at a cost of around R700,000. The national squad evacuated to Tzaneen a few weeks ago.
Then in mid-2021 the Tshwane municipality-run Zeekoegat waste water treatment plant spewed sludge directly into the dam, leaving a mass of bubbling dark water not far from where the rowing course is supposed to be.
And third is the emergence of a new invasive weed, salvinia minima.
The hyacinth problem has improved to a great degree, with insects bred by the Rhodes University centre for biological control (CBC) killing off the plants after they were sprayed with a sub-lethal dose in February.
But there is an unsprayed section of hyacinth further along the dam, which has become a battlefield between landowners on the one side and two government departments — water and sanitation, and forestry, fisheries and the environment (DFFE) — on the other.
Kobus Fell said he and other landowners helped keep the dam clear for years, spraying with government-issued herbicide each time the hyacinth threatened to encroach.
Shortly before the Covid-19 pandemic government instructed him to stop, saying it would take care of the problem. Instead the hyacinth ran rampant.
Rowing SA (RowSA) president Sean Kerr says they are stuck in the middle, but they have made progress. “We sold the idea of a public-private partnership and government agreed to fund the herbicide if we funded the helicopter. We duly did that in February.”
Government confident dam will be ready for the rowing championships in September 2023
Selwyn Jackson, on the world masters organising committee, is again repairing the course, which requires 30km of rope and which to date has taken up 700 man days by volunteers. He hopes it will be finished by the end of May.
Jackson has also battled to keep up with World Rowing’s requirement of regular water quality test reports, because DWS stopped doing them in 2018.
He eventually persuaded them to resume testing if he takes them onto the dam. The E.coli bacteria at the source of the Zeekoegat spillage was off the charts, at 240,000 colonies per 100ml, compared to SA’s acceptable rate of 400 and Europe’s 500.
At the 2016 Rio Olympics, World Rowing allowed for 2,000.
“The highest on the course itself has been about 600,” said Jackson, adding the Water Research Council was testing bags of activated carbon to reduce the bacteria.
RowSA paid R800,000 for the hosting rights, but Kerr said they could turn a profit. “Masters pay an entry fee, so at about 2,500 athletes the regatta starts to make money.”
Jackson said they anticipate about 3,000 participants, although World Rowing believed it could be as high as 4,000.
To combat the salvinia, the only option now was manual removal, said the DFFE. Prof Julie Coetzee of Rhodes’ CBC said a testing programme with a control agent, a weevil, had stalled. “Unfortunately we haven’t been able to progress with this programme due to lack of funding.”
Roodeplaat has been a conveyor belt of Olympic and world championship medals for SA.
Di Clemente, an early trailblazer with partner Don Cech, returned to the sport to boost his fitness and lose weight. “I felt pregnant,” he said en route to train on the Vaal river with his three training partners one Sunday morning.
Di Clemente, 2012 Olympic gold medallist Sizwe Ndlovu, 1992 Olympian Ivan Pentz and Justin Hagemann, who competed for SA in the lightweight pair, were forced off Victoria Lake in Germiston for the weekend because of a schools championship that had been re-homed from Roodeplaat.
Everyone in rowing is mixing caution with optimism when it comes to the world masters.
But not government. “Both departments are confident that the dam will be ready for the rowing championships in September 2023, provided that nothing affects the implemented management plan on the dam,” DFFE said in a written response to questions.
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