Fresh.Ngo cleans 700m stretch of Harties shore

HARTBEESPOORT – In September, the FRESH.ngo team cleaned up a 700m stretch of the Hartbeespoort Dam shore and removed about 200 bags full of plastic.

“The water naturally sorts the waste and it was mostly smaller objects like plastic bottle tops and sucker sticks that had washed up on the beach. The most disgusting were the blue earbud pipes in their millions – these are also responsible for numerous blocked drains. They all used to be made out of wood before the plastic companies wanted to make even more profits without proper recycling.

All this plastic waste will stay for centuries if not removed – slowly breaking down into the even more harmful form of micro-plastics. They contaminate the irrigation water and food supply of our most densely populated areas, posing a huge health risk to our people.

The water quality in the Dam looked very murky. The biggest pollution source now is the Hennops River – flowing in pitch-black and putrid from sewage. Soon all the sludge lying on it’s bed, from badly-run wastewater treatment works will also all be washed into the poor Dam.

With the approaching rainy season thousands of tons of plastics will again be washed down into the Dam. The Hennops, Jukskei and Crocodile Rivers from Gauteng’s largest cities flow into what has become a gigantic dump, caused by inept waste removal of upstream municipalities, and dumped into feeder streams to be washed out of sight.

The absence of our Kaalspruit litter traps in Tembisa, at the very worst pollution spot upstream, is worrying. It was a casualty of a multi-million Rand diversion here focusing on erosion. The mountains of plastics FRESH cannot remove there will now also come down river, if we can’t find funding to replace it. Stopping pollution at source is the only way.

This Hartbeespoort Dam beach we cleaned became a beautiful natural place – once the rubbish was removed. A place of soft sand where the kids can play. At least this small stretch of the bank will be clean. A big thanks to all who came out to make a huge difference.” – Willem Snyman, Director of FRESH.ngo