Qinira Estuary Management Forum chair and deputy chair Pat Dalgleish and Edward Maddocks look exhausted.
Despair fills the room as the two civic and environmental leaders play drone footage of the Qinira River.
We look, as if from space, down on the river as it meanders through fantastic riverine bush and coastal forest, except that the river is that putrid puce colour we have come to know so well.
The interview on Bonza Bay Road takes place hours before election day.
In this quiet room, a picture born of experience is set out which seems far removed from the pomp and excitement at the polls.
The camera starts at the Edley Symons weir, which carries a spindly old 16cm-wide pipe bearing sewage from an estimated 13,000 Beacon Bay north and south and Bonza Bay residents on a 6km-long treacherous journey to the Qinira-Gonubie Waste Water Treatment Plant — itself in a constant state of leakage through another stream at German Bay, which spews into the ocean and drifts around Gonubie Point on the longshore drift.
That pipe itself is old, made from asbestos, and breaks regularly.
Getting in to do the repair is a bushy path to hell, but for years now, the forum, led by an 18-member core of volunteer residents known as the Scarabaeinae or Dung Beetles and supported by the 61-member River Report group, has cleared access to the breaks, creating a green carpet for the city’s plumbers and workers to get to the leaks.
The members pay their own employees to do the work, and will dive in to get the job done during one of the relentless emergencies.
Like all sewerage systems in the city, our hazardous effluent is born by gravity to be treated at 15 plants (some of which are broken), which means all of them run downhill and often close to or along our streams and rivers.
Often, our sewage has to be pumped uphill to cross rivers just like this one, or along river banks.
When a pipe breaks, our beautiful, much vaunted wild streams, rivers and estuaries become foul, feudal gutters to the ocean.
And when any of our 96 pump stations stop working, mostly through vandalism — some to keep criminal scrap collectors in business — our sewage also spews into the next available downhill.
All these leaks lead our watercourses, and from there this foetid toxic waste heads for our estuaries and beaches.
This aspect of a dangerously polluted lagoon at Bonza Bay mouth is gnawing at the consciousness of Dalgleish and Maddocks.
They live on the banks of the river. They know when the river has turned from a pristine wilderness to a foul deadpool.
They can smell it so hard that doors and windows must remain closed and children are admonished to stay away from the danger.
Their playground has become a toxic waste dump.
These men are literally being driven to the point of despair by the fact that they know what is arriving at the picnic area at the mouth, and yet they see no official warnings, no acts of closure, from the city.
They see children splishing and sploshing about, having the time of their lives, not knowing they could possibly fall very ill.
This is how it is today, they say.
The drone moves about 1km upstream and stops at a point that has confounded conservation-minded residents — there are still a large number of ratepayers who bitterly refuse to join any civic-minded action, saying their rates are the highest in SA, having increased 82% in 10 years and they pay about R600 a month for sewage removal.
This is not all — the men say residents are paying between R8,000 and R11,000 a month to the city for rates and services.
“Why should they pay more,” is the attitude.
It hovers at a point where two systems draw a neat line. This is where fresh, clean water flowing naturally to the estuary collides with the puce line.
Actually, says Maddocks, it is far worse than grey water, “it’s blackwater” — the worst.
Then there is footage of the culprit — a pipe gushing sewage into the stream which they say is caused by the Qinira pump station which has stopped working.
Pump maintenance is a mystery, with one of the critical pumpstations, T8, consisting of two pumps, one to do the work, and one to kick in if it fails.
Yet, the backup pump sits in a state of disrepair and when the working pump breaks, it gets taken off for repairs — and the sewage flows straight into the environment.
It is both environmental and financial madness, they say.
These residents are well informed. They have been working with the city’s sewage and other authorities for almost seven years.
They said: “It’s been a long fight. We have privately funded locating leaks, clearing bush for access, we have monitored five pump stations in our area.
"We reported leaks, vandalism, everything to BCM. We list issues, locate leaking covers.”
Maddocks, an engineer with his head in his hands, said: “The leaks are now permanent.”
The forum leaders believe the endless vandalism of pump stations has a rationale — switch gear is being stolen and is being used to regulate the izinyoka network in the shacklands.
They believe criminals are charging shackdwellers for illegal electricity and the switches are used to turn non-payers off.
It is a bizarre scenario but one born out of a failure over 30 years to electrify areas.
A trip in the recent past to one of these areas near the airport revealed a staggering array of live fencing wire, across roads, in the air, whatever works to turn on lights and stoves and charge cellphones.
It is a dangerous place and many of the victims of electrocution are children.
Dalgleish and Maddocks say that while there are some city plumbers who work with them to stop the spewing, the repairs are often not enough, the pipe to Gonubie is too small and the repairs to broken roofing at pumpstations are the bare minimum.
In addition, the area has become more dense, there are too many people using a system designed decades ago for far fewer people, feedback communication from the city is poor and takes a long time — “We send a pin location of the problem and get no response”.
There is not enough removal of roots which have grown into the pipes and little or no jetting, the alien hyacinth which thrives on sewage and starves the river of oxygen is also a perfect partner for mosquitoes — the flower holds a small, pungent pool of water which mosquitoes enjoy.
“We have the biggest mozzies in town,” they quip.
They say there are no telemetry pressure warning systems which would alert the authorities to a breakdown and leak.
It upsets residents that there is an apparent “lack of empathy” from the city, both for the public health safety risk and the damage being done to an ecosystem that supports a myriad of birds, fish, buck, insects, and amazing forest.
“The eco system could collapse,” they said.
While the city might not be sounding the alarm over the high levels of faeces in the river, the public appear to have voted with their feet.
Word has got out that the lagoon is polluted and the crowd of savvy local picnickers has thinned.
The problem is that over the festive season, and with the super El Niño and water shortages looming, there could be more people and more pollution.
The forum leaders say they have run out of options, and are considering taking legal opinion.
Questions were sent to the metro last week, but the authority had not responded by the time of publication.
