Return to the Blue Lagoon

While in Durban I am training on a piece of water known as Blue Lagoon. It is where the Umgeni River meets the Indian Ocean, awesome place. Over the past two weeks Durban has experienced a huge amount of rain and the lagoon is now the furtherest thing from blue. The high water has just made me realize how badly we are treating our water systems, by the time KZN's source of drinking water reaches the ocean its literally an open sewer. I have my suspicions that factories along the banks of the river take advantage of the high water and release there waste directly into the river because they know it's almost impossible to pin point where it comes from. On Friday I had to skip a session due to the fact that I did not want to wade through the slimey/oily gelatinous mass that had been deposited all along the banks of the river as well as paddle through oil, litter and hyacinth that is thriving on the CO2 rich polluted water. I checked out the E coli levels in the river last week before the river even filled and they were sitting at 2300 colonies per 100ml almost 20 times higher than safe. (Water is considered safe to swim in at a max of 130 colonies per 100ml.) I am affected by water systems everyday and this has made me very aware of the problems surrounding our most precious resource, we need to do something.