EDITORIAL | Town planning is key preventing recurrences of flood disasters

SA’s latest weather-related disaster has left 1,000 residents of Port St Johns in the Eastern Cape homeless and severely damaged roads and bridges in the area.

It has also once again raised the issue of town planning and spatial development amid the burgeoning manifestation of climate change.

Residents have pleaded with authorities to move them from flood-prone areas, while mayor Nomvuzo Mlombile-Cingo said the town needed infrastructure upgrades on bridges, roads, water, electricity and network connectivity as well as drainage.

Storms are not unusual in the area. Just last April, similar flooding caused severe damage in the coastal town.

Less than R3m of a R13.3m disaster relief grant given to the municipality by National Treasury after last year’s floods has been spent so far. Mlombile-Cingo says spending has been slower than expected due to persistent inclement weather.

Now President Cyril Ramaphosa, who visited the area on Tuesday to assess the damage, has vowed rebuilding will start immediately.

This will be of great comfort to residents who have lost their homes and children who are unable to get to school because of damaged bridges.

But will the money be spent wisely? Or even spent at all, given the municipality’s track record after last year’s floods?

And despite Ramaphosa’s comments that authorities must be more alive to town planning because a number of people have built on wetlands and slopes, will the increasingly crucial issue of climate change be adequately considered when it comes down to it?

Instead of knee-jerk reactions, wasting money on simply rebuilding homes in the same high-risk areas, we must interrogate how we plan and what impact our decisions will have in 10 and 20 years’ time, and even beyond.

The area is a relative hotspot for storms, and scientific studies indicate that extreme weather events such as heatwaves and large storms are likely to become more frequent or more intense due to climate change.

So forethought andplanning are crucial.

Instead of knee-jerk reactions, wasting money on simply rebuilding homes in the same high-risk areas, we must interrogate how we plan and what impact our decisions will have in 10 and 20 years’ time, and even beyond.

Municipalities must pass bylaws stipulating where people can and cannot build houses. And those bylaws must be properly implemented and policed — a task our authorities often struggle with.

In more rural areas that fall under traditional councils, there must be a mutual understanding that the future safety of residents is paramount, and that homes cannot be allowed to spring up on land that may be unsafe.

Annual seasonal checks should take place, to identify any potentially high-risk homes that could be damaged by extreme weather.

It seems a simple task, yet it is a big ask for municipalities, many of which cannot even keep drains clear of debris, resulting in flooding in areas that could easily have been avoided.

Next week will be a year since killer floods decimated large parts of KwaZulu-Natal, in which at least 435 people died and caused an estimated R17bn in damage to infrastructure.

Today, some of the key infrastructure that was damaged in the torrential downpours is still out of action.

Government repeatedly talks about the importance of proper town planning and spatial development to mitigate the impact of severe weather. But there appears to be little of this being done at grassroots level.

Unless we change the way we work, the billions we spend on disaster management will be wasted — lost in the next downpour.