City Of Harare | More than 600 tonnes of sand recovered monthly at sewer works

At least 15 to 20 tonnes of sand are being removed daily from Firle and Crowborough Sewage Treatment Plant in Harare, a situation which has greatly contributed to increased blockages and contamination of water sources. A lot of foreign objects like aborted children, stones, car tyres, cow hides and clothes just to mention a few are recovered from sewer lines every day. Acting Waste Water manager Eng Charles Juta said Harare has a network of sewer lines which are in excess of 5 000 km and it was a mammoth task for the Department to attend to all bursts. “We have red flagged areas like Highfield, Dzivarasekwa, Mbare, Mabvuku and Tafara among others as suburbs that are overloaded and have aged sewer pipes which outlived their lifespan. This simply means that the sewer networks in these areas can no longer accommodate the flows coming in because of age and size,” he said. “Most of the households in the red flagged areas were designed for two to three people but now these places accommodate more people than the intended figure. This leads to the overloading and rampant abuse of the sewer networks by the residents not only in Mbare but in other areas as well.” He said residents also abuse the sewer lines by pouring grit into the system. “Grit is the river sand used by many residents when cleaning their utensils. There is a weekly degritting programme with high velocity machines that blow the grit from the sewer pipes. When grit deposits in our network, it reduces the pipe hole meaning that there is very little space for the fluid to go through and that alone leads to blockages” he further explained. He said Council has earmarked roads like 9th Street and Muchenje in Mbare which have sewer challenges. He added that the sewer pipes in Mbare are deep with an average of three to five meters down.