Peninsula Paddle

See the links to various reports and interviews from the paddle below

What we found in the Black River. The City moved in about 3 days later and began clearly up the river. Good for them, but this isn’t a sustainable solution.

Water Quality 2019 all tables

Lara writes:

The 10th Peninsula Paddle took place two Sunday’s ago, on the 8th of September. The day went off without any hitch and the paddlers endured the strong winds that at times were difficult to paddle into. However, the wind was the least of our worries. The sea of plastic that surrounded us as we paddled through the Black River was the worst we have seen over the 10 year period. As well as paddling through raw sewerage at a point and being forced to drag the canoes through the Steenberg canal due to the inability to paddle.

Water samples were taken and we found E.coli bacteria exceeded 1 million colony forming units (cfu) per 100 ml. Recreational users shouldn’t be exposed to more than 1 000 cfu per 100ml. This was a serious concern, due to there being many people coming into contact with the water on a daily basis. about the risks to anyone coming into contact with the water. The deterioration of the water quality is in need of a dire attention by every individual, not just the city.

The health of the city is seen in its waterways and if you had to decide on the health of our city, based on the outcome from the Peninsula Paddle, we could conclude that it is extremely unhealthy.