Illegal sand mining is booming in the drought-impacted river bed of Buffalo City’s largest supplier of drinking water, Bridle Drift Dam. With drought having shrunk the dam by 80%, leaving only 20 million cubic metres out of 98 when full, residents have watched in shock as a daily stream of tipper and flatbed trucks, and bakkies loaded with workers and spades pour onto the receding sandy bottom at the upper end of the dam, and take as much as they can.
Rain came to the East Cape coast last month filling private tanks to overflowing but had almost no impact on Buffalo City Metro’s dam catchment area in the Amatola escarpment. The province is in the grips of a climate-change driven drought, but though unpredictability is a feature of the new climate, the SA Weather Service is predicting above normal summer rain possibly a deluge.
Great white sharks appear in numbers off East Coast chumming could be the cause PREMIUM By Mike Loewe - 22 May 2021
The revered and feared great white sharks which vanished off Cape Town are appearing daily off the East Coast and East London.
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Search ends for missing East London surfer feared killed by shark PREMIUM By Mike Loewe - 24 April 2021
The search for missing Chintsa body boarder Rob Frauenstein, 38, believed to have been bitten and killed by an enormous great white shark last week, has come to an end.
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Braai fires prohibited as heatwave burns across Eastern Cape PREMIUM By Mike Loewe - 13 March 2021
Braais are banned on Saturday as a heatwave is set to send the temperature to above 40ºC in Buffalo City and Gqeberha on Saturday, the SA Weather Service warned on Friday.
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