Heed your mandate

Alex Lepnik, Table View

Thank you for publishing last week’s article (“Something is rotten in Table View,” Tabletalk, October 9).

Something indeed is rotten in Table View since 2005 or even longer.

From 2005 until 2011, I covered the portfolio in the Table View Ratepayers’ Association that dealt with matters like this.

Unfortunately, we did not have Facebook back then so I could not publish the grievances of the community or pictures as is possible today.

We could only address matters in our regular open meetings.

However, Tabletalk published numerous letters of mine, and, despite my public warnings, I ended up with the tragedy of 80 tons of indigenous fish dying in Flamingo Vlei.

It is with disbelief that in this day and age, a municipality can release sewage into a nature reserve such as the Diep River and Flaming Vlei and continue to do so more than a decade later.

I have personally witnessed this.

Please spare me and the greater Table View community with another useless reply from Xanthea Limberg. We’ve heard enough already.

The reason for my letter is Flamingo Vlei is overgrown with algae and plants that should not be there after winter in the first place.

Sewage pollution is the perfect fertiliser. These plants will die and take the last oxygen out of the water.

The City must take the millions of rand paid in rates by our community alone, not for their royal salaries, but rather to urgently remove the plants and algae, clean the Diep River and Flamingo Vlei of alien plants and restore the natural balance that is supposed to be the mandate of the guardian of the nature reserve.

Fix, repair and upgrade the entire sewage system in our area so that this does not happen again.