Wastewater is the water we flush down our toilets, send down the drain from our showers and sinks or discharge from factories. It’s supposed to travel through intact pipes to be cleaned at wastewater works. If it gets into rivers and streams, it pollutes and contaminates these with nutrients, antibiotics, antiretrovirals, heavy metals, plastics, and pesticides. It can cause a full-scale ecological collapse by polluting freshwater so badly that life in the system is wiped out.
As populations grow, it’s vital for governments to monitor wastewater closely. In South Africa, the government initiated the Green Drop assessment programme in 2008 to report on all the wastewater treatment works. But the programme only ran for five years before stopping for eight years. It was eventually relaunched in 2021. What happened in those missing eight years? Aquatic ecologist Mark Graham, research scientist Nicholas B. Pattinson and water and sanitation engineer Dave Still found that tens of millions of litres of sewage went missing through leaks. They tell The Conversation Africa more about their research.
