PRETORIA, South Africa -- A cancer warning has been issued over the 'dangerously high level of chemical pollution' in the Rietvlei Dam -- the drinking water source for 27% of the residents of the towns of Pretoria and Centurion since 1933. The water has such high levels of chemical pollution that it has now become a huge threat to public health and is also greatly endangering all the wild- and birdlife dependent on it.

Prof. Riana Bornman, head of andrology at the Department of Urology at the University of Pretoria, said the research team only tested male animals and fishes dependant on the Rietvlei dam water and found that "the mixture of industrial and agricultural chemicals which are polluting this water resource, are combining and creating estrogenetic chemicals which lead to the 'feminisation' of male creatures,' she said. For instance, male barbers (Clarius gariepinus) were found with female ovaries and clearly defined, underdeveloped penises, she said.

Scientists such as Prof Bornman warn in this report that the chemically-polluted water has been found to cause cancer and genetic defects in aquatic life and in the huge variety of African wildlife which depends on it for its survival. The warning is contained inside a SA's Water Research Commission report -- which however was not allowed to be published by the local ANC-run town council until the names "Rietvlei Dam and Rietvlei Nature Reserve" had been censored off the report altogether, the local Afrikaans-language newspaper Beeld reports today.

About 27% of the towns of Pretoria and Centurion's drinking-water is pumped from this dam and distributed via a water-purification plant to the reticulation network and thus can be deemed 'reasonably safe as long as the equipment works', Beeld also  reports.

However, many tens-of-thousands of homeless, poor black squatters are also living along its banks -- drinking it, watering their livestock and irrigating their crops with it each day without any purification, a fact which is greatly worrying to the scientists.

Rietvlei dam also is a major roosting and breeding locality and feeding area for Pretoria?s huge variety of waterbirds - and they are facing extinction as a result -- as it also is one of the very few reserves on the central South African highveld.

In a seperate warning, issued in March 2007 by Lufuno Mukwevho <mailto:lmukwevho@csir.co.za>lmukwevho@csir.co.za of the Centre for Scientific Research in Pretoria, it was also noted that, since the Rietvlei dam nature reserve is just a few kilometres away from Johannesburg international airport and close to the R25 interstate highway, the pollution from aircraft- and motor vehicles also cause air pollution which ends up in the dam water. Mukwevho wrote: 'it is important that all human development projects, farming or settlement not be allowed next to the reserve."

http://bcb706.blogspot.com/2007_03_08_archive.html

The nature reserve houses a large variety of African wildlife -- springbok, zebra, black wildebeest, red hartebeest, blesbok, waterbuck, eland, ostrich, hippo and even white rhino. Waterbirds include herons, cormorants, egrets, geese, ducks and many more.

http://www.sabirding.co.za/birdspot/050214.asp

Original Afrikaans-language newspaper report:

http://www.news24.com/Beeld/Suid-Afrika/0,,3-975_2175470,00.html

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