When it rains it pours: How to report stormwater flooding
10 June 2023
Residents to report stormwater floodingThe flooding and ponding of our roads, public open spaces, and even homes during periods of wet weather is a headache that all residents wish to have resolved in as short a time as possible. For that reason, it is important that residents are correctly informed as to how to log instances of flooding caused by blockages in our stormwater system, and not confuse this with flooding caused by bursts in our municipal, or drinking water supply pipes.
If we are experiencing, or have recently experienced rainfall, and a roadway has become flooded with water, the cause is most likely to be the stormwater drainage system being compromised in some way. In cases of extremely intense rainfall, the stormwater systems and/or canals may not have the necessary capacity to drain away the amount of rainwater that has fallen.
More commonly, however, the cause is blockages in the system created by illegal dumping. While the Urban Mobility Directorate’s Roads and Infrastructure Management teams have been hard at work clearing wind-blown and illegally dumped materials from our stormwater systems, we also rely on residents to alert us to road infrastructure problems when they see them.
Published by:
City of Cape Town, Media Office