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ESTATE NEWS

NEWS FROM THE ENVIRONMENTAL TEAM

fter the enormous amount of rain ISSUE 1 : Spillages of sewerage in and underneath the N4 towards the existing
we received over the past two onto the Estate outfall sewer north of the N4;
Amonths, you’ll have been informed • The light blue line: Collects all the
via our Facebook pages of various To understand the issues have a look at the sewerage by gravitation ONLY from the
sewerage spillages. I did answer the post, map below. bright green line inside Silver Lakes and
but since there seems to have been some also takes it underneath the N4 to the
misconceptions I decided to address this There are two issues to deal with here: existing outfall sewer;
issue in the magazine again. • Sewerage spillages in the current • The dark blue line: From the Silver Ridge
system View pump station sewerage is pumped
Firstly I MUST state categorically that • The Proposed Silver Lakes Outfall Sewer along Silver Lakes Drive, over the ridge
we have been in contact with the City from where it gravitates underneath the
of Tshwane Municipality, under the As you will see from the map there are N4 towards the existing outfall sewer
leadership of Henk Booysen and Mike currently three lines that take sewerage north of the N4.
Westman, on a near continuous basis. away from Silver Lakes and the areas
We have never and will never NOT around us: The wide grey line is our stream system
approve or ignore any attempts to • The pink line: From the Six Fountains in which the various dams are situated.
upgrade the Silver Lakes sewer lines. pump station, sewerage is pumped over The golf course and Estate were both
the ridge along the outside of the Silver developed along the shores of this
Lakes wall, from where it gravitates subsidiary of the Pienaars River.
I want to discuss sewerage spillages on the
Estate and the two-fold affect it has on the
Estate:
• Not only does it create an unhealthy
situation, it speaks of poor maintenance
of the sewer lines;
• It also contaminates our dams! We all
know about the hornwort in the dams
on our Estate. This is due to nutrients
(sewerage seeping and spillages)
present in the water that feeds these
weeds. Although we have a programme
in place to curtail these weeds, the
hornwort is doing us a big favour. It
is ‘fixing’ our ‘dirty water’ problem by
cleaning the water for us. When we
do our water tests, we seldom find
high E.coli readings – only just after a
big spillage from, for example, the Six
Fountains pump station.
So where does the water that ‘pops’ the
drains and seeps into the soil come from?
• We, as homeowners, do it ourselves!
• We, instead of as per the law, keep storm
water on site or transfer it to the lower
point of the landscape, route storm
water from the roofs of our homes and
into the sewer system!
• If your house has no gutters you are
probably not guilty. The roofs of houses
without gutters spread the rainwater
out evenly around the house when it
drops to the ground.
• Houses with gutters however, might
cause a problem without you knowing!
The water from the gutters, instead of
being spread onto the property, might
be CHANNELLED INTO THE SEWER
SYSTEM of your house. Your contractor
might have thought he was doing you
a favour so that there is not so much
water standing around in puddles on
paving and in flower beds, but by doing
this he has done a huge disservice to the
Estate as a whole.

INTRA MUROS FEBRUARY 2020 19