‘Don’t blame the spruit, blame man’

In response to the article, Crater in the middle of a park, Week ending 2 December, Sandton resident Rob Zwaneveld writes:

The article states: ‘Braamfontein Spruit, that runs through the park, has caused severe erosion’.

Now this intrigues me, the spruit has done nothing wrong. Let me explain … before all the tarred roads, houses and offices arrived on the scene, there was a happy spruit doing its job, taking excess water from the veld and diverting it to the Jukskei River. All was fine, storms, heavy rain, hail – no problem.

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Then came man and covered the land with all the non-penetrable surfaces to stop the water going into the ground to do what water does best in nature, and giving our poor spruit the impossible task of channelling the vast amounts of rainwater.

On top of that, all the natural vegetation that keeps its banks intact were replaced with alien vegetation. So now the poor spruit does not have the means and capacity to handle the task of a proper river.

And we blame the Braamfontein Spruit?

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