Durban beaches lose ‘Blue Flag’ status

North Beach, South Beach, Bay of Plenty and Addington Beach lost this status after failing tests for water quality. Litter and dirty ablution facilities were also cited as reasons for the decision. A fifth beach at Westbrook, north of Durban, is also set to lose its Blue Flag status. Although environmentalists say the impure water quality spells disaster for thousands of tourists who gather at Durban’s most famous attraction during the holidays, senior municipal officials have played down concerns. The DA’s Radley Keys, a member of the provincial legislature, said he was appalled by the ‘complete ineptitude and inaction on the part of the KZN Department of Environmental Affairs in response to the major incidences of water pollution in the province in the past few months’. Full Sunday Times report

Durban’s response is to threaten to withdraw from the internationally-recognised Blue Flag programme. The city is demanding the programme’s controlling body explains why ‘double standards’ have led to four of its six beaches losing their status. ‘We will continue to monitor our water and beach quality and will continue to ensure that we remain SA’s premier domestic tourism destination, in spite of those whose political agendas are otherwise,’ city manager Michael Sutcliffe wrote in his monthly newsletter yesterday. ‘If they fail to agree to meet us, we will certainly expose what we see as double standards and will withdraw from the programme,’ he added, according to a report in The Times. Sutcliffe accused Alison Kelly, the South African representative of the Blue Flag Organisation, of working with ‘oppositional groups who have their own agendas to portray our city poorly’, and has called on the organisation to give her the boot. Full report in The Times