Cape Town and Port Elizabeth between them have nine of the 19 beaches that were officially awarded Blue Flag status in South Africa.
Four beaches on the KwaZulu-Natal south coast were accredited along with four beaches in Port Elizabeth and five beaches in Cape Town.
South African municipalities applied to have 35 beaches accredited. The remaining 16 beaches were granted pilot status and could be Blue Flag beaches by 2010.
A glaring omission from the Blue Flag programme were the beaches from Durban.
The eThekwini municipality had six beaches on the programme, but lost their status after unacceptably high sewage-related pollution was detected at five of the city’s Blue Flag beaches.
The Blue Flag programme is owned and run by the independent non-profit organisation Foundation for Environmental Education (FEE) which has its head office in Copenhagen.
The Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa (Wessa) has been accredited to run the Blue Flag programme in South Africa. Not all beaches are graded by the organisation – only those where the respective municipality has applied to receive a Blue Flag.
There are 2 585 beaches and 614 marinas in 31 countries in the Northern Hemisphere that currently have Blue Flag status.
When the Durban beaches lost their Blue Flag status earlier this year due to poor water quality, the city’s municipal manager Sutcliffe demanded that international Blue Flag beach scheme fire its South African co-ordinator, accusing her of “double standards”.
Both Wessa and the Blue Flag programme organisers rejected his call.
The eThekwini Municipality then announced that it would be operating its own quality system – the details of which still have to be announced.
