Sewer Network

For years, most homes in Penhill relied on individual conservancy tanks and French drains rather than a piped sewer connection — an older, higher-maintenance arrangement with real health and environmental drawbacks for a community this size. Contract 347Q/2018/19, the construction of a sewerage network for Penhill (Phase 3), replaced that with a piped connection to the main municipal sewer in Pine Tree Road, Rosedale — laying 160mm to 315mm pipeline through the estate and a 700mm crossing under the railway line, with around 200 residential properties disconnected from their old tanks and connected to the new system.

A project touching nearly every property in the estate could easily have meant months of upheaval for residents. The contractor’s information memorandum to residents set out a number of commitments intended to keep that disruption to a minimum:

• Advance notice before any team accessed a property, with the contractor required to engage each owner directly rather than simply arriving unannounced.
• Restricted working hours: 07:30–17:15 on weekdays, with occasional Saturday work (07:30–14:15) only when a resident genuinely couldn’t be reached during the week, and only with advance notice.
• Work sequenced so most properties needed at most two site visits — the pipe-laying and railway crossing were completed first, and only once that crossing was commissioned could individual property connections go ahead.

How closely these commitments were followed on the ground varied by property, but the intent behind the memorandum was clear: keep close to 200 individual sewer connections from becoming 200 individual disputes.

The project also included a bulk sewer main connecting the neighbouring Welmoed development through to Eersterivier, which meant closing Hawke Road — one of Penhill’s access routes — for construction. An early coordination gap meant the contractor’s advance notice initially reached the wrong local body, so the safety implications of the detour hadn’t been worked through before residents needed to start using it.

Once PHORA picked this up, it moved quickly: engaging directly with the contractor, their project managers, the City of Cape Town, and the ward councillor to get ahead of the risk. PHORA raised specific safety concerns about the temporary detour route — its unsuitability as a through-route, potential crime spots along the way, the historically unsafe rail level-crossing it required, and vehicles disregarding traffic signs in the area — and pushed all parties to actively mitigate them rather than just accept the detour as-is.

On the ground, that meant security patrols placed along the detour route for as long as it was in use, residents kept updated in real time on whether the road was open on any given day, detour signage only uncovered when actually needed, and the final full closure — for resurfacing once the underground work was done — kept to a single defined window rather than left open-ended.

The project ran into real delays — hand excavation needed at many properties, bad weather, and the COVID-19 pandemic all extended the contract. By the time budget pressure from the pandemic hit, sewer links across Penhill’s roughly 208 properties were about 98% complete and connections around 60% complete, but seven streets — comprising 85 properties — couldn’t be connected in that phase. PHORA notified residents directly, made clear those connections would follow in a later phase, and that anyone who chose to connect earlier at their own expense could still do so.

Read the original Information Memorandum to Residents (PDF) →