Tenants on a farm owned by a man serving on a Water Board claim their water is being contaminated by sewage seeping through broken pipes.
The residents, many of whom are pensioners, claim the tap water is filthy and will make them sick.
Residents of Palmietrivier Farm in Grabouw spoke to the Daily Voice on condition of anonymity, fearing victimisation or even eviction.
“The water comes straight from the dam into tanks and then to our taps, it’s not filtered. We get drinking water from our daughter in town, others installed filters on their taps and some buy water,” says one elderly resident.
Anthony Appel, an Overberg District Municipality councillor, says farmer Edward Molteno should know better as he serves on the board of the Groenland Water Users Association.
But Molteno denies that the water is vuil.
“It is impossible for the sewage to seep into the drinking water. We have septic tanks that run into a soak-away,” says Molteno.
“The septic tanks break everything down to a thick black liquid which seeps into the ground where an underground ecological system breaks it down.”
But Appel says health and safety inspectors will be sent to the farm to check the water purity.
Residents also claim they pay up to R700 per month per household for electricity even though nobody has a geyser.
But Molteno says Eskom is to blame for the high electricity costs.
“We buy electricity at a much higher rate than people in the village... the cost of supply has to be distributed among the families and the water pump also uses electricity.”
He says the geysers were vandalised and “repairing it would mean residents would pay up to R300 more for electricity”.
ANC ward candidate Margaret Le Roux says they will take the complaints to provincial and national government.