Cape Town - Foul odours reported in the Drakenstein Municipality have been confirmed to have come from smouldering fires under a wastewater plant.
The Drakenstein Municipality said they had launched an investigation after receiving a number of complaints about the stench.
The probe looked into two possible sources of the smell: a Wellington landfill site and the adjacent maturation ponds of the Wellington wastewater treatment works.
The third possible source of the unpleasant odours was the crematorium in Dal Josaphat, which falls under the jurisdiction of the Cape Winelands District Municipality.
“The municipality’s investigation has ruled out the landfill site as a source (of the stench) and has found that a veldfire that had spread to the maturation ponds could possibly have contributed to the bad odour.
“When this came to the municipality’s attention, it immediately deployed its fire services teams to extinguish the fire – first by spraying thousands of litres of water on to the surface, and then by applying a layer of foam which acted as a wetting agent that was absorbed deeply into the ponds.
“When the fire and smoke persisted – mostly smouldering beneath the surface of the ponds –the municipality’s fire services devised methods to extinguish the fire underneath the surface. An excavator has also been employed to open up the area – up to the lowest level – to ensure that there is no danger of any flare-ups,” the municipality said.
Drakenstein Municipality has assured residents that necessary measures have been put in place to prevent the bad odours from spreading.
The Cape Winelands District Municipality said that, although the Drakenstein Crematorium in Watt Street in Paarl had been extensively blamed for all odours, there were only two occasions last month when an unpleasant stench could possibly have been caused by the crematorium.
“These were the incidents on 7 January… and on 20 January, when the crematorium alerted authorities to the possibility of emissions.
“It has been found that the crematorium is unlikely to have been the cause of odours on any of the other nights that odours were reported, as it was not operational at the time.”
Cape Times