Environmental damage at Middlevlei; An update

Botfriends has been involved with environmental damage caused by erecting an illegal fence constructed on adjacent property to Middlevlei and into a wetland. This was discussed at the BREF public meeting of February 2019. Botfriends officially reported to the appropriate authorities in May 2019, who then got into an extended, time consuming process of the responsibility for removing the fence.

The DEA&DP, finally, agreed that the fence was illegal and that the process of having it removed would be undertaken. But the fence is still in place, nearly a year later. Examples of other illegal activities, acknowledged by the appropriate authorities in 2017 have also still not been concluded.

 A follow-up investigation of the illegal fence in September 2019 led to the discovery of other environmental damage on the boundary of Middlevlei, both inside and outside the legal boundary fence. Botfriends reported on this at BREF and to Cape Nature. It has been inspected and is still under investigation. There has been no real progress on this issue either (see download below).

The main issue seems to be that of accepting responsibility for damage to the environment and then taking appropriate responsibility for actioning the actions required. The time delays result in costs increasing to remedy a simple problem. Continued delays cause costs to increase radically, which then causes further delays because of budgeting problems. This leads to further delays, which usually increases the level of responsibility required. Damage to the environment continues to accumulate.

The original simple issue then gets side-tracked and potential solutions are no longer dealing with the original problem. The matter then becomes so confused and complicated that it tends to be shelved, with the result that a simple solution of solving a problem by working with nature ends up working against nature and changes nature itself.

There are many examples of this spiralling of problems and costs, particularly in Ward 8, but also in other locations around greater Hermanus, as reported elsewhere by Botfriends and other organisations.

Botfriends is working hard to solve some of these problems and in many cases, (for example: alien clearing on public land, erosion control and fire risk reduction on public land), has found a way around some of them, but this usually works only where private funding is obtained to solve public problems. This is often not acknowledged by government and the risks are great that good environmental work may be destroyed by actions of disaster management, especially as this usually involves short term actions and techniques.

Michael Austin

Chairperson Botfriends  January 2020

Download the comments Botfriends made in august 2019, below