Heritage Cases

An environmental authorisation was received on the 11 December 2013 for the above mentioned project (DEA Ref: 14/12/16/3/3/1725). Environmental Impact Management Services (EIMS) was the appointed EAP for the project. However, the applicant, SANRAL, proposed changes to the layout of the Mngazi River Bridge and access road, requiring a new application to be submitted to the relevant authorities. As such, this application will include for the amended layout. This project will involve the construction of access roads on both sides of the R61 and a bridge across the Mngazi River (situated 71 km from Mthatha on the R61), which falls under the jurisdiction of the Port St Johns Local Municipality in the Eastern Cape. The existing access to the villages on both sides of the R61 will be closed off from the R61 by guard rails. The existing access roads are concealed by the existing R61 dimensions, and as such create dangerous turning areas off the R61. The proposed bridge and access roads will therefore provide a safer and more formalised access to the local communities and thereby ensure pedestrian and vehicular safety. Please refer to Appendix A showing the proposed access roads and bridge. The north-eastern side of R61 (where the proposed Mngazi river bridge and access roads are located) will be joined to the south-western side of the R61 access roads by means of an underpass which will pass underneath the R61 (as seen in the Figure 1, Figure 2, and Figure 3 below). The roads will be gravel with an approximate width of 5.5 metres wide. The Mngazi bridge structure will carry a single 4 m wide lane together with a 1.5 m pedestrian walkway (total width of 5.5 m). The bridge structure will have a total length of 60 m.Tributaries exist on both the north-eastern and south-western sides of the R61 which drain into the Mngazi River. For ease of reference, these tributaries will be called Mngazi East and Mngazi West tributary respectively. The proposed access road will cross the Mngazi West tributary at two points (see Figure 2 and Figure 3 in the Draft Basic Assessment Report (DBAR)) and will therefore require piped culverts to be installed at these two points to ensure the flow of water within the drainage channel is not impeded. This small tributary river system is a single-channel system with a very small catchment area that has been largely transformed by local land use (rural settlement and small-scale subsistence farming). The channel appears to have been subject to previous artificial diversion and now proceeds below the existing tarred R61 road via a concrete culvert. The channel has been highly modified and is lined with gabions. The gabion-lined section of the channel passes beneath the R61 and enters the main Mngazi River on the western channel bank just north of the existing R61 road bridge (see Figure 3 in DBAR). The construction of the Mngazi River Bridge and access roads will redirect the Mngazi West tributary along the proposed gabion lined channel to enter the Mngazi River on the eastern bank just south of the R61 (see Figure 3 in DBAR). The gabion-lined channel section has been excluded from the PES/EIS assessment by the Aquatic Specialist (see Appendix D1) as it is not suited to the types of assessment tools used in the study. The Mngazi East tributary is a small tributary river system that drains towards the Mngazi River. The proposed design layouts suggest that direct impacts to this tributary system will be minimal as infrastructure and excavations will for the most part be located outside of the riparian zone of the tributary channel on the eastern side (see Figure 3 in DBAR).