Cape Town - The Greater Table View Action Forum (GTAF) has lost an appeal to stop the development of a block of 35 flats at the intersection of Gie and Arnold roads.
This after mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis dismissed the residents’ appeals and confirmed the City’s municipal planning tribunal’s decision approving the development.
At the centre of the GTAF appeal was the provision of an on-site wastewater treatment plant. The forum said its reference was not found in the application and did not appear on the site plans.
The forum argued that there was the potential of a spill from the treatment plant and that the City had not aligned the process for the management of such negative impacts on the environment.
The forum was also concerned that the building would have a negative visual impact and that it’s built on a boundary wall, which would impact the adjoining properties’ rights.
This is also the development where the developers claimed they were being victimised because they were “black developers” and that they had been told that they were going to change the demographics of a predominately white suburb with “new black semigrants”.
In approving the application, Hill-Lewis said appeals against the package plant were made without substance and evidence.
Hill-Lewis said that the private on-site temporary plant would be subjected to a water use licence application in terms of the National Water Act regulations, adding that this typically entailed its own public participation process.
Hill-Lewis said none of the appellants indicated how the additional 195m2 would adversely impact them.
GTAF Planning and Biodiversity head David Ayres said in allowing the development, the mayor and the City had shown contempt for the people of not only Table View, but also the city, who were not content with the total destruction of the Diep River and the Milnerton Lagoon.
Ayres said the mayor and the City had now allowed unproven private wastewater treatment plants to be approved at the planning stage.
“These wastewater treatment plants are proven in other areas to be unsatisfactory in their compliance with E coli effluent. What this application represents is that the mayor and the City will allow a private wastewater treatment plant metres away from residents’ properties and on the doorstep of schools and this is not acceptable,” Ayres said.