Pietermaritzburg High Court orders eThekwini Municipality to tackle sewage crisis
The Pietermaritzburg High Court has ordered the eThekwini Municipality to take urgent action to address the city’s ongoing sewage crisis.
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The Pietermaritzburg High Court has ordered the eThekwini Municipality to take urgent action to address the city’s ongoing sewage crisis.
This decision follows a legal challenge by the Democratic Alliance (DA), which claimed the municipality had repeatedly failed to maintain its sewer infrastructure. These failures have led to the contamination of rivers and beaches, adversely affecting residents and local businesses.
"The DA was forced to approach the court after the municipality showed no willingness or ability to end the sewage disaster, which has repeatedly closed beaches, degraded the quality of life for residents across the city and inflicted financial harm on businesses."
The court ordered the city to publish weekly E. coli readings for all public beaches, urgently repair and maintain its sewer infrastructure, and communicate water-related hazards to residents and businesses.
DA eThekwini mayoral candidate Haniff Hoosen welcomed the ruling, saying it was a crucial step towards protecting residents, restoring public health, and holding the municipality accountable for years of neglect.
"For far too long, the political leadership of eThekwini have taken the public for granted and have been ignoring the scores of complaints regarding sewer overflows into our rivers and oceans," Hoosen said.
"Every attempt to secure reasonable and urgent mitigating measures from the municipality has been ignored, and this left us with no other option but to force the municipality to do what it is legally obligated to do."
ActionSA also welcomed the court’s attention to the crisis but noted that its own legal application, filed in November 2022, is still awaiting a separate judgment.
The party said it had initiated legal action before the DA joined the case in June 2023 and stressed that it has consistently sought to hold the municipality accountable for failing to repair and upgrade the city’s sewer infrastructure.
"As ActionSA has consistently argued, the eThekwini Municipality must comply with its legal obligations to repair and upgrade the severely dilapidated sewer infrastructure at the heart of this disaster, which has had devastating consequences for the city, its economy and its residents."
mthobisi.nozulela@iol.co.za
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