by Willem Snyman fresh.ngo
‘Yesterday I visited Riverview Park, the trees we planted there are all are growing well, sprouting new leaves and making a great difference to the park - still looking remarkably tidy with the clean stream entering it. The railing on the one bridge that was removed for the TLB during the cleanup should however be reinstated soon.
The Bagerezi site next to this is a hive of activity, although appearing chaotic, a lot of good recycling is happening here. Everyone was industriously busy on different products with remarkably little going into River.
Downwards, on the lower border of the long Riverview Park is Lakeside Park which will be a future cleanup and restoration site. The staggering power of the Hennops to sculpt these large islands and form a meandering path through the old Centurion Lake by building up riversand is evident here. Much of the vegetation on these newly formed islands are however alien plants with lots of weeds. It would be a great and fun project to plant indigenous trees and plants here, to transform the old lake into a beautiful wetland. To become a bird and animal sanctuary with the pedestrian bridge providing a great view down over this area. The new and impressive Exarro building looms large in the middle, bordering the park and appears hopeful of spearheading positive change to this central park area in the heart of Centurion .
We visited Olievenhoutbosch next, site of the upcoming cleanup campaign to take place on the 29th to include officials and on Saturday the 30th of March, for the community. There is much hope here and positive projects deserving praise. Generally the area looks quite clean, with the streets fairly tidy. At the community centre we found a spotlessly clean health clinic run by the Tshwane Municipality.
Some hot spots were found however - the small stream outside the clinic wasn't looking well with a sewerage leak and much rubbish, there is also a large illegal dumping site furter down, with building rubble filling up and levelling the stream banks.
We'd like to work towards a cleanup campaign over the whole area of Olievenhoutbosch, focusing on the stream sources and going further down the Rietspruit, to connect with communities, reach out to schools, plant trees and beautify the neighbourhood; cleaning the wetlands and the water running through as part of the Rietspruit, which starts here and eventually joins the Hennops next to Sunderland Ridge.
It is here in a veld bordering the stream next to the R55 that a big cable theft problem exists. The main feeding cable of the Sunderland Ridge WWTWs runs parallel to the stream for a few kilometers from a substation. Repeatedly small sections of around 10m of live cables have been dug up, cut off and stolen, thereby incapacitating the plant for many days and causing great environmental damage downstream, as the micro-organisms take up to 15 days to recover.
As part of the upcoming campaign on the Rietspruit we'd like to work with Tshwane to find a permanent solution to this major problem that has been the cause of much pollution in the lower Hennops, wreaking havoc in the Crocodile River Nature Reserve’
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