Soetwater becomes coastal conservancy

pic: Bruce Sutherland

Soetwater Resort, between Kommetjie and Scarborough on Cape Town’s south peninsula, is an important historical camping site that represents the environmental challenge of finding a balance between conservation goals and community needs.

The area represents some of the last remaining functioning coastal ecosystems in Cape Town and is of great long-term cultural importance.

The resort itself, which is set amid "phenomenal coastal biodiversity" according to Gregg Oelofse, Head of Environmental Policy and Strategy at the city, is entrenched in the holiday-plans and psyche of many locals, especially those from the Cape Flats, who go there every year for long weekends or end-of-year seaside breaks.

The resort has one of the highest densities of oystercatchers, shore birds that are endangered in South Africa, and active families of otter and caracal, along with a unique coastal wetland with lagoons.

However, it is also next door to the old Witsand landfill site, which although closed for almost 30 years, occasionally ‘leaks’ waste into the area as it has not been capped.

To manage this challenge, the city’s Environmental Resource Management Department (ERM) has begun a process to protect the land, not as a traditional nature reserve but as a coastal conservancy, in which camping and social activity - not only conservation-focused activities such as hiking or bird-watching - are encouraged.

"We would like people to continue using the area they way they like to use it, but within a context where the natural habitats remain functional and healthy," says Oelofse.

Since 2008, Soetwater Resort has had a full-time nature conservator whose task has been to oversee the ecological management of the area as well as the interface between nature and people. And at the end of 2009, the area below the tarred roadway from Slangkop (Kommetjie) Lighthouse to Misty Cliffs became funded as the new Soetwater-Witsand Coastal Conservancy.

For the next three years at least R300 000 (half from ERM and half from the city’s Solid Waste Department) has been set aside for the management of the coastal conservancy and the landfill site, with Kommetjie Environmental Action Group (KEAG) as the implementing agency.
 
Already the boat ramp in the resort has been upgraded, and stone walls have been constructed in the parking lay-bys. Information signboards have been erected and more are on the cards.

Significant alien clearing has been completed, and the KEAG team is also clearing illegal dumping, cleaning up litter and managing the landfill site, which involves taking care of the dunes covering the landfill, and cleaning up any waste leakages.

The project will provide at least 2 000 days of employment a year, and the city plans to grow the project on a larger scale.