Page 62 - SAICE book proof 2 LATEST JULY 2014

s a i c e
KWAZULU-NATAL PROVINCE

5. Solid waste management presents civil en- ◊ Below: University of KwaZulu-Natal
gineering with many challenges. Aggressive leachates ◊ Bottom: Durban University of Technology
that eat through many materials rendering ordinary
pumps useless after short periods, dangerous methane
gases and obnoxious odours and the mere challenge to
find suitable space for what can become small moun-
tains of waste in time, are among the issues that have
to be addressed. The eThekwini Municipality is a shining
example of how these problems have been dealt with
and is a tribute to the environmental arm of the civil
engineering profession.
6. Sand pumping along the beachfront to re-
plenish the beach sand moving north eastwards along
the coast due to littoral drift has for many years re-
mained a headache until the idea came to build a sand
conveying pipeline along the popular beaches of Dur-
ban. The sand is now dredged south of the harbour
entrance where it accumulates and the dredger then
enters the harbour and moors at a dedicated berth to
discharge sand into a hopper. Finally the sand and water
mixture is pumped and discharged onto the beaches.
Civil engineering therefore serves the tourist industry
in a roundabout way.

7. Universities of KwaZulu-Natal

• University of KwaZulu-Natal is rated as one of
the top 500 in the world and currently has about 45
000 students enrolled at various campuses including
Westville and Pietermaritzburg. Its civil engineering
department has constantly delivered professionals in this scheme consists of a series of components. First of
this field of study. The main campus building tower of all there are the four dams in the upper Tugela River,
this over 100-year old university has been a familiar not far from where this river rises as a mere trickle from
sight on the Berea ridge, the skyline of Durban. the top of the Drakensberg at Mont-aux-Sources and
then drops down 947 m at the sheer cliffs of the Am-
phitheatre. During national off-peak electricity periods
29°52’03.02” S, 30°58’51.38” E the water is pumped from these dams into the Driekloof
Dam, 93 m above the river level, where the muddy wa-
ters of the Tugela is discharged into the first impound-
• Durban University of Technology was established ment and where the silt settles before the cleaner water
in 2002 by the merger of Technikon Natal and ML then spills into the main Sterkfontein dam which on a
Sultan Technikon and was previously known as the clear day looks like a pristine lake in Switzerland. This
Durban Institute of Technology. It has four campuses dam has a capacity of 2 656 million cubic metres. When
in Durban, and two in Pietermaritzburg. It has about electricity demand is at a premium the flow is reversed
25 000 students and its civil engineering department and the turbines in the man-made caverns in the rock
is a vibrant and progressive asset. face of the mountain is turned by the down rush of
water to generate up to 27.6GW which is fed into the
national grid. These underground turbine halls remind
29°51’13.32” S, 31°00’17.24” E one of cathedrals and incidentally one of the very well-
known peaks, namely Cathedral Peak resembles a lofty
cathedral on top of the mountain not so far away.
8. Drakensberg pump storage facility and the
Tugela Vaal Water Transfer Scheme rate among the
marvels that modern day pioneers create. In essence 28°35’48.67” S, 29°06’26.63” E

1