Civil Engineering April 2022 | Vol 30 No 3

48 April 2022 Civil Engineering T his book is truly a labour of love. Every page is a tribute to Tony’s enthusiasm for his subject and his intimate knowledge, gained in a lifetime of working in Cape Town. Nobody else could have written this book – certainly not with the empathy for the subject, and the understanding that comes from having been there at the time of an appre- ciable number of the events described. Getting it published has been a saga. More than 90% of this book was publication-ready twenty years ago, and it is only now, thanks to Tony’s persistence and, latterly, the intervention of the SAICE History and Heritage Panel, that it has reached the bookshelves. If you have any interest in engineering history, get yourself a copy. If you live in or know Cape Town, get yourself a copy – you will be surprised by how much you will learn about Cape Town’s complex topog- raphy. If you would like a good read about the evolution of a city, and the politics and personalities around its service delivery, even more reason to get a copy! Gems include the stories of: Q Q The rivalry between the “Clean Party” and the “Dirty Party” of the 1880s. Q Q The absence of sanitation regula- tions, and the battle by engineering and medical experts (and others) to convince the councillors, in the first instance, and then the citizenry, progressively over decades, to institute improvements, and to pay for them. Q Q The high quality of the workmanship in those early days – as evidenced by the condition of the masonry outfall of 1900 which is still in service after 120 years. Q Q The fate of the “Varsche River”, the stream from Table Mountain that provided ships with water and was the reason why the Dutch chose to establish a refreshment station here, rather than at the much superior, but waterless, harbour of Saldanha Bay. Q Q The controversy that has erupted every time (for the last hundred years anyway) a proposal is made to discharge effluent into the sea. Q Q The parochialism of some of the municipalities (e.g. the fate of Lunn’s imaginative scheme for the Elsieskraal) and their determination (on occa- sions – not always) to not cooperate with their neighbours to implement a water or drainage scheme with benefit beyond their borders. Q Q The drastic effect of urban develop- ment, with greater paved areas, on drainage systems of the Cape Flats – ill-defined watercourses became major streams, and winter flooding became frequent. All this required expensive engineering works, while over the same period surface water quality deteriorated markedly. Q Q The engineering works that we take for granted, but which, if they were to be proposed today, would no doubt run into enormous environmental opposi- tion (e.g. the mountaintop dams and Ou Kaapse Weg, built in the 1960s through then pristine mountain terrain). H i story and her i tage Book review: Much Water under Many Bridges A review by Prof. Kevin Wall of Tony Murray’s new book titled, Much Water under Many Bridges. An Engineering History of the Catchments, Rivers, and Drainage Systems of Greater Cape Town. Much Water Under Many Bridges An Engineering History of the Catchments, Rivers, and Drainage Systems of Greater Cape Town TONY MURRAY Much Water Under Many Bridges is available from the SAICE bookstore The Longkloof Weir -