POLLUTION: Up S**t Creek — Berg River Marathon competitors fell ill due to suspected poor quality of water

From the Paris Olympics to the Berg River Canoe Marathon and Dusi Canoe Marathon in South Africa, water sports and water quality woes are intertwined.  

At the Paris Olympics, three German swimmers fell ill after competing in open-water races in the polluted Seine river, according to a statement by the German Olympic Sports Confederation. 

In South Africa, competitors in the Dusi Canoe Marathon, the 120km race between Pietermaritzburg and Durban, were warned about “potentially poor water quality”.

Participants in this year’s Berg River Canoe Marathon, a four-day, 240km race from Paarl to Velddrif in July, spoke to Daily Maverick about the difficulties and disappointments they faced. 

Paddlers pay the price

Tiaan van Zijl (35) fell ill on the second night of the race, vomiting and suffering from a severe fever. He was unable to finish. 

“Despite all the preparation, getting to know the river and getting everything ready, the last thing I considered was getting ill. We spent a lot of time on the river and things happen. We do capsize. We do fall in the river. You slip on the bank… you splash your face with that river water, so you ingest it inevitably,” he said. 

On the second night, “I was lying there with my bucket next to me, and I was considering, should I find an ambulance to come and get me? The nearest hospital is about half an hour’s drive away. At the end of the day, my system kind of just worked all the stuff out. The symptoms lasted about 24 hours. 

“We [paddlers] call it the ‘river guts’.”

Another participant who became ill was Robbie Herreveld, a six-time winner who first won in 1991 at the age of 19.  

He said his illness this time was not nearly as bad as two years ago when he withdrew after suffering severe stomach cramps, diarrhoea and nausea. 

“This year I… finished, but the night before the fourth day, that’s when the problem began. That was diarrhoea and stomach cramps but I managed to pull through. I nearly pulled out… again, but I managed to hang in and get to the finish,” he said.

Herreveld said he suspected poor water quality in the Berg River was the cause. While food poisoning could be a possibility, it was unlikely, he said, as several other competitors experienced the same symptoms while they hadn’t all eaten the same food.

Common denominator

“You can’t pinpoint it, that’s impossible, but the common denominator is that it’s coming down to water. Hopefully, they can sort it out. It needs to be found where the… pollution is coming from and… action… taken to rectify it.”

Herreveld took part in two races on the upper section of the Berg River before the marathon and became ill after one of those races. It took him about a week to recover.

“It’s something that needs to be sorted out, not only for the good of the sport. We’re a small minority in this whole ecological disaster… birdlife, fish life, everything in the river surely has to be affected by the poison that’s coming down the river,” said Herreveld. 

Matthew Cockram (55) from Johannesburg, who completed his 15th Berg River Marathon this year, said he could smell that the water flowing into the Berg River from streams was dirty and polluted.

Cockram became “violently ill” the Saturday after the race ended with severe nausea and diarrhoea. He was unable to eat for two days. 

“It is really hard to say [what caused my illness]. I took a long swim on the second day of the race, so I was in the water, and I know I ingested some… But it’s hard to say if I was sick because of that or because of something else,” he said. 

Organising committee

The Berg River Marathon Organising Committee noted that over the years some competitors had become ill while participating, but that it was hard to determine whether this was due to exhaustion, water quality, injury, food poisoning or a combination of factors.

René Boehm, the race coordinator on the committee, has participated in the race since 1974 and said he had never become sick, “or not really sick”.

He said the river water was tested by various municipalities.

“I haven’t in all these years, in the 50 years that I’ve been with it, never seen that they say we have to cancel it because the water is dirty… Of course, it’s also very difficult to know how dirty the water would be, to be actually lethal… so that it’s really a risk, because we’ve been paddling in this type of water all the time,” said Boehm.

Responding to the instances where competitors became ill during this year’s race, Boehm said: “One doesn’t know whether it is the food or whether it’s a combination, or the water, or just sheer exhaustion. It is really difficult. But we haven’t got any actual proof of what the reason is. 

“One can’t say this is now at a level where it is actually really serious, because the water is never clean. It just doesn’t get completely clean.” 

Water sample

Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) Western Cape head Ntombizanele Bila-Mupariwa said a water sample was last taken from the Berg River in mid-June.  

She said the coliform bacteria counts of 10 of the 18 samples collected from the main stem of the Berg River were above the acceptable limit for recreational activities.  

Coliform bacteria are often referred to as “indicator organisms” because they indicate the potential presence of disease-causing bacteria in water.

The provincial DWS refused to release the complete results of its last sample run, stating: “The department is mindful of sharing raw results that are not clearly explained. The results, once interpreted, will be made available by the department’s National Office in a Quarterly Water Quality Report. Note that this quarterly report will only be available from October 2024.”

Bila-Mupariwa said the DWS could not say whether the water quality in the Berg River caused competitors in the marathon to become ill. 

“There could potentially be [many] other factors that led to the unfortunate events where athletes have fallen ill,” she said. 

The DWS said the water quality in the Berg River had not worsened over the past few years. 

The department identified areas of the river that were of concern, including the Chris Hani and Malkops streams and the Stiebeuel River. 

Bila-Mupariwa said these areas were being attended to.

“The department is of the view that the traces of pollution within these streams/rivers are largely due to a lack of sufficient services at informal and formal settlements.

“Our interventions to respond to these kinds of activities include a task team led by the department that consists of the respective individual municipal representatives within this area,” said Bila-Mupariwa. 

“The first session is scheduled for September. The aim of these task teams is to have each municipality develop an action plan to address any pollution or potential pollution that resulted or could result from land-based activities within the municipal area.

“The second task of this task team is to identify various stakeholders, such as representatives from industries, agriculture, tourism, community-based forums, etc, to form part of these task teams and to identify other key tasks to respond to.”    

Sources of pollution

Dr Kevin Winter, a UCT emeritus associate professor, research director at the Water Hub research facility in Franschhoek and a member of the Berg River Canoe Organising Committee, said the organisers were not getting support from municipalities or the province for “a very prestigious race”.

He said there were multiple sources of pollution contributing to the Berg River’s degradation: poorly treated wastewater and sewage, contaminated stormwater, runoff from agricultural activities and growing informal settlements along the banks. 

“One thing about this year’s race is they caught quite a heavy downpour… So in some ways, that at least released lots of pollution and diluted it. But it was very easy to take in a pathogen or bacteria, as you go down in that very turbulent water… 

“The Berg River Dam was overflowing at the time as well, so it added another volume of water, which they normally release in low-water stages, but it certainly was considerable,” he said.

Considering all of this, Winter said, the water may well have posed a health risk. 

“The overall trend is most definitely an increase in the deterioration of water quality. It’s slow, but it’s definitely there. It’s… of big concern, particularly because of land use and land use cover that has been poorly managed along the river itself,” said Winter.

Professor Anthony Turton, a water expert at the Centre for Environmental Management at the University of the Free State, said the Berg River was “an absolutely filthy river”.

He said the immediate, short-term health risks of ingesting polluted river water were gastroenteritis and diarrhoea. However, there could be more serious long-term effects. 

“If you have a group of highly fit athletes that are all preparing for a specific event, they’ve put a lot of effort into training, getting themselves into peak fitness, and then they are all exposed to poor water quality, and they all come down with some other impairment… Well, then there is a very high probability that it’s caused by the direct exposure to contaminants,” said Turton. DM