Groundwork executive director Bobby Peek said the R200-million fine was “probably one of the largest fines ever imposed by a municipality for a water breach”. File photo: Oupa Nkosi
Environmental experts have hailed the R200-million fine imposed on the Govan Mbeki municipality for discharging raw sewage into the river as progressive, but goes into taxpayers' pockets to pay the fine to the province. Instead, they argue that the time has come to hold individual administrators accountable.
Activists and academics working in the water and environment sector said this week that the fines signal a change in direction for the government to act decisively against water and sanitation violations, as water infrastructure in several municipalities has collapsed. said.
This comes after Betal Magistrate's Court fined the city after it was found guilty of six environmental offenses, including contraventions of the National Environment Act 1998 (NEMA) 107 and the National Water Act 36 of 1998. It is something. Failure to comply with compliance notices. Disposing of water without permission and causing a negative impact on water resources.
Mpumalanga National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) spokesperson Monica Nyusuwa said Mpumalanga City committed acts that caused serious pollution to the environment between November 2019 and September 2020.
Mr Nyuswa said that the “disposal and distribution of wastewater, untreated sewage” will be carried out at the Emzinoni site, Embalenhle sewage treatment plant, Trihard Spruit, Wela Mlambo, Leandra N17 pumping station, Waterval Hook, Blesbok Spruit, Groot. He said it was released to Spruit.
He said the state and local government have entered into a plea deal and sentencing agreement.
In aggravating the sentence, state advocate Beauty Chibangu told the court that the municipality had been found guilty of serious crimes that had adversely affected the ecosystem and violated citizens' rights to welfare. In a bid to reduce the sentence, attorneys for the city argued that pleading guilty was a sign of remorse and that the city took responsibility for its actions.
“The judgment against the municipality combines all counts for sentencing purposes and imposes a total fine of R200 million on the municipality, of which R50 million is conditional on the municipality not being found guilty of breaching section 49A. “Pursuant to Section 5 of the National Environmental Management Act 2002 and Section 151 of the National Water Act 36 of 1998,” Nyuswa said.
“The City is further ordered to repair all specified equipment to be identified by the contractor by December 2026 and to install weighbridges at all landfills by May 30, 2025. .”
University of the Free State environmental management professor Anthony Turton said the high fine was “great news”.
“Under the leadership of Director-General Shaun Phillips and Water and Sanitation Minister Senzo Mchunu, we have decided to launch a tough crackdown on delinquent municipalities,” Mr Turton said.
“This is part of a larger national operation that they're starting to crack down on and regulate.”
But he said the “best example” of failing water infrastructure was the city of Emfuleni, which has faced multiple court cases for environmental violations that it has fought with taxpayers' money, but the problem remains unresolved. Ta.
“Municipal and labor law always took precedence and staff were fully paid to work from home throughout the litigation period…so I'm a bit skeptical of the whole idea that the public must be happy as shown by the authorities… 'It's disgusting when in reality they're using taxpayer money to pay the fines,' Turton said.
He said another “good news” was the fact that the central government was starting to single out local government officials individually and bring criminal charges against them for environmental crimes.
“Dr. Phillips has become even more aggressive on this issue and is seriously considering criminal charges against the officials. Fundamentally, I think we are moving in the right direction,” he said.
Turton added that eThekwini was the first metropolitan area in South Africa to fail to provide basic water and sanitation services to its residents.
“We are witnessing an accelerating outage of water services not only in Govan Mbeki City, but across the country.The entire water infrastructure is in various states of failure in different parts of the country, but in eThekwini Municipality there are eThekwini is the first metro to fail,” he said.
“Subway is failing in its core mission of providing basic services to taxpayers.”
However, he said the recent Durban High Court judgment in eThekwini stated that municipalities do not have a monopoly over the provision of services, adding: “That is, if a municipality is not providing a service; This means that citizens have the right to procure those services from other independent service providers.” ”.
He said Ballito, KwaDukuza Municipality, was an example of a town where residents had been procuring water services from independent service providers for the past few years.
Ferial Adam, president of WaterCan, an initiative by the group Outa to cancel tax abuse, said similar fines had been imposed on local governments in the past, but the amounts were “very small.” Stated.
“But we think more things like this will happen. Private organizations like us have brought criminal charges against the City of Joburg, and the Ministry of Water and Sanitation has brought charges against 14 municipalities over similar issues,” Adam said. he said.
He said Watercan had filed criminal charges against Joburg's former acting city manager, Bryne Maduka, and city manager, Floyd Brink, for allegedly failing to respond to sewage flowing into the Klip River.
“It’s great that local authorities are imposing fines, but when you have to pay a fine, it’s taxpayers’ money and there’s nothing to make people change their behavior, so people have to take responsibility. “No,” Adam said.
He said charges against eThekwini municipal officials were also initiated by partner NGOs.
“People died in places like Hammanskraal.” [of cholera]we need to consider charges of manslaughter,” she said.
Groundwork executive director Bobby Peek said the R200-million fine was “probably one of the largest fines ever imposed by a municipality for a water breach”.
“It is an important positive step that the government has moved to actually impose fines on local authorities. The question is, can local authorities pay the money? Are we going to cut back on services because we have to pay?”
He said eThekwini was facing sewage problems because over the years it had approved several housing development developments in the city's north and outer west without ensuring adequate infrastructure to accommodate the demand for additional services. Ta.
He said Joburg was also facing problems in terms of failing water infrastructure. “The Vaal Triangle municipality, which is part of the canton of Joburg, is a complete nightmare,” he said.
