City continues with road infrastructure clean ups ahead of winter rains
28 May 2023
The City of Cape Town’s Mayoral Committee Member for Urban Mobility,
Councillor Rob Quintas joined the Road Infrastructure Management (RIM)
Department teams in Atlantis, Parklands and Joe Slovo Park this week to oversee
some of their clean-up operations. The work included catch pit cleaning; pond
cleaning and the cleaning of pipes which forms part of the directorate’s annual
Winter Preparedness programme, to mitigate potential flood risks in Cape Town.
The City of Cape Town's RIM department plays a crucial role all year round in maintaining the City's stormwater assets. However this time of year all the department's districts and depots across Cape Town finalise their cleaning efforts with the annual winter preparedness programme.
This programme has been implemented over the past 11 months in a proactive manner to improve the hydraulic functioning of the stormwater system in preparation for the winter period. This also includes various areas that are prone to flooding or have been identified as hot spots for continuous illegal dumping. The cleaning of pipes, catch pits, wet and dry ponds and canals is currently still under way with the teams completing the remainder of the work over the next six weeks.
The cleaning interventions include:
- Catchpit Cleaning
- Pond Cleaning: where weeds, reeds and large amounts of illegally dumped waste is removed from the City's dry and wet ponds to ensure that the in and outlets of the ponds are not restricted. In many areas, these ponds are mostly used for illegal dumping and are prone to flooding due to this system abuse
- Stormwater pipeline cleaning: A duct cleaning machine (powered winching machine) is used which pulls a bucket through a pipeline to collect and remove debris.
- Canal Cleaning: Cleaning of concrete-lined and unlined canals and channels where litter, weeds, reeds and other vegetation are removed.
- In addition to the scheduled cleaning, hot spot and trapped low-lying areas prone to flooding are monitored and inspected prior to, during and after every major rain event.
Published by:
City of Cape Town, Media Office
