Water Affairs’s collapsed remediation project exposed the severity of Hartbeespoort Dam’s pollution. While authorities seem to have turned a blind eye or have downplayed the danger, Abrè J Steyn found that sewage, and more shockingly, nuclear waste are to blame.

Like so many times before,
I recently fished Hartbeespoort Dam with my long-time friend, Mike Elliot. But this would be the last time as Mike was terminally ill with cancer. The dam was filthy and we caught nothing, so, filled with sadness, we left. Mike said, “Harties is just as sick as I am.” He died a few days later. Harties still functions, but if it deteriorates further, the fish, and Harties, will die.

Sewage pollution only the start
To find what made Harties so ill, we must look to the past. In 1970 Mike and I founded the Pretoria Spinfishing Society, the oldest national lure-fishing association. Four years later I left Pretoria, but over the next 20 years I infrequently returned to fish Harties with Mike and the boys. The dam was our headquarters and between us, we spent thousands of happy hours on it, unaware of the deadly danger in its water. Every time I returned, I saw how it was deteriorating. First water hyacinth choked the surface. Then blue-green Microcystis algae turned the dam into a massive bowl of pea-soup. Finally, great shoals of large blue kurper died en masse and washed up on the shore.
The hyacinth and algae were caused by a massive inflow of sewage, which came down the Jukskei River from Johannesburg – the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry granted exemption to the Northern Sewage Works, allowing them to “legally” violate stipulations of the Water Act. This has continued unabated ever since. Currently, two million litres of sewage – some of it raw – flows into Harties daily.

Too little, too late – nuclear waste pollution
However, it was what we couldn’t see that was much more deadly. No-one knew that the Pelindaba nuclear plant was licensed to routinely dump vast quantities of nuclear waste into the Crocodile River, just above the dam. When, in 1992, we found proof of radioactive contamination, after 100kg of uranium hexafluoride escaped from the plant, the University of Pretoria withdrew their investigative support. A mass of biological specimens collected by our members were then also mysteriously lost by Wits University.
Despite parliamentary discussions, the Atomic Energy Corporation (AEC) and the authorities dismissed it as a “minor accident” posing “no danger.” It was minor against the background of the information I now have, which was suppressed by regulators and by those entrusted with custodianship of our environment and public health.
Of this mountain of irrefutable evidence and information, there’s only space for the iceberg’s tip – like the submission to a parliament portfolio committee, by a former employee of AEC (now the South African Nuclear Corporation, Necsa). It shows that routine dumping of uranium-containing radioactive waste has been ongoing for the last 40 years – and the quantities are mind boggling. In 1999 alone, 242 million litres of radioactive liquid waste was released into the Crocodile River (over half a million litres per day).
This information only surfaced after SAPA reported on it – after receiving Necsa’s 1999 annual results three years late on 31 March 2002, the National Nuclear Regulator reprimanded Necsa, citing “an unfortunate error” of miscalculating “the amount of radioactive material Necsa was allowed to discharge under its existing licence.”
Furthermore, an incalculable volume of underground uranium-containing waste water from worked-out goldmines on the West Rand has started to percolate towards the dam and if it can’t be stopped, it’s destined to become a flood. In addition, the Water Research Commission recently found that Rietvlei Dam’s water, which spills over to Harties via the Hennops River, is dangerously polluted with toxic waste, pesticides and heavy metals – contact with it is hazardous to humans and animals alike.
Dangerous domino effect
My move from Pretoria was fortunate as it prevented me from fishing Harties or eating its fish as often as Mike Elliot and thousands of other oblivious local anglers did. Nuclear radiation is a powerful carcinogenic and I wonder how many people got cancer, or will still get it, as a result of Harties fish.
By entering the food chain and the national distribution of contaminated agricultural products, this threat will affect everybody. It’s not only a local threat either – millions of people all along the Limpopo to the Indian Ocean depend on this water for drinking, crop irrigation and fishing.
And it won’t disappear with time. Uranium has several isotopes – 238U makes up over 99% of all uranium on earth and its half-life is longer than the age of our planet. In human terms, the contamination can be considered eternal.

Call for action
With the facts exposed, government and mining and nuclear industries should be more honest about public concerns. Not so. Water Affairs continue their ludicrous charade as the authority on the state of the nation’s water resources. Their acting director in the North West, Mr Petrus Venter’s description of Harties water as “pristine” in his media release last year and his pugnacious letter to the editor in last week’s Farmer’s Weekly, are more examples of this immoral public deceit.
The public, whose lives are endangered and who pay the salaries of these truth-twisters, should insist on their dismissal and prosecution.
The nuclear industry also killed public debate, swayed public opinion through misinformation, secrecy and cover-ups, and discredited environmentally minded groups, disrupting and hi-jacking their meetings. They disregarded massive amounts of expert information, available internationally – which tells a vastly different story than they do. This isn’t how transparency, accountability or democracy works. It’s time we attempt to find solutions together.