A South African study has pinpointed the source of water pollution in a river that is filled with bacteria.
In Africa, there has been a lot of struggles concerning clean drinking water and proper sanitation, which makes this incident nothing worthy of headlines. The polluted river is situated in Pretoria and is known as the Apies River. It is the river that flows towards the city before the body of water joins the Pienaars River. The river was found to contain microorganisms that developed due to different human activities taking place in and around the area.
A River Pandemic for Rural Communities
These activities include a discharge of wastewater into the river from sewage treatment facilities, all of which are not treated before entering the river. Other than that, the river is also receiving waste from informal settlements located along the riverbanks. This gets transferred through dumping and from surface runoff when there is heavy rainfall. These informal settlements are not planned for or are illegally owned. None of them were built with the proper regulations and don’t have proper waste management services.
Currently, the river is used for irrigation, which transfers the bacteria from the river back onto land that affects villagers in rural communities and commercial farms. Both these parties use the river’s water, especially for cattle, which is = concerning. Informal and rural settlements continue to use the river to dump waste and use it for personal and household purposes, which raises health concerns that could make people sick.
Organisms from the river have been isolated and tested from the river. The total number of bacteria and sediment samples has been collected for tests and proved that the total river wastewater increased because of increased disposal from sewage treatment facilities. Any treatment plans previously implemented has become pointless, making the chances of people getting sick guaranteed as it is easy to contract E. coli.
