A child’s sewage-soaked teddy bear lies amid plastic bottles and rotting waste, while an onshore breeze carries the stench of human excrement and rotten eggs to people gathered on the shore.

This was the sight and smell that greeted members of the SA Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) and media on a brief inspection of Wemmer Pan, a recreational lake south of Johannesburg’s CBD, on Tuesday.

“The smell is unbearable and the environmental degradation is visible,” said Buang Jones, provincial head of the SAHRC.

“The water is black. It is an environmental catastrophe.”

The lake, which has long been used by rowing clubs and canoeists as well as families picnicking on its tree-lined shores over weekends, has been under pressure for some time as raw effluent from blocked sewer mains and acid mine drainage from long-closed gold mines nearby flow into it, said Rod Mackinnon, chairperson of Wemmer Aquatic Clubs, which oversees the clubhouses and grounds used by rowing and canoeing clubs.

“It’s getting worse,” Mackinnon said.

The lake’s problems accelerated in October after heavy rains caused blocked sewers to overflow into it.

He said the situation had been exacerbated by “sewage miners” who deliberately block the main sewer lines to look for valuables in the silt.

“When you have 46% unemployment, I guess that isn’t the worst thing [to do].”

The result was that E. coli levels rocketed at the lake, forcing local canoe clubs to decamp to the cleaner waters of Germiston Lake, while school rowing clubs also stopped training at Wemmer.

A recent water quality test showed the E. coli level at 240,000 parts per litre.

“We had to cancel two junior regattas,” Mackinnon said.

The canoeing clubs had also shut down their development programmes, he said.

People wanting to relax on the lake’s shores on weekends were being driven away by the stench, he added.

The “rotten egg” smell is caused by hydrogen sulphide, a gas caused when organic matter is broken down by microbial action.

The lake’s water was heavily tainted by metals such as iron, magnesium and manganese. This was the result of acid mine drainage seeping out from the closed gold mines in the area.

“Those mines are long dead and the companies that owned them are long gone,” Mackinnon said.  “There is no hope of a reclamation fund.”

Jones said the commission would engage with all the relevant parties, including the national water regulator and industry, to resolve the crisis.

“We all have the right to a clean environment.”

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