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between Zeekoevlei and the sea for the purpose of a new disposal site and constructed a new

works there. In due course this became the huge Cape Flats Treatment Works.

Stewart’s commissions were not confined to the Cape Peninsula. Outside of Cape Town, he
designed the Johannesburg Waterworks at Zuurbekom, and provided supply systems for a

number of other towns including Bloemfontein, Oudtshoorn, Worcester, and Stellenbosch. In
1912 little Riversdale employed him to sort out problems with the supply scheme designed by

his old boss John Gamble some forty years earlier. He designed a new weir on the Vet River,

but had a set-to with the local Council, who wanted their local foreman to carry out the
construction. Stewart considered him incompetent, held out for his own man, and got his

way. In 1914 he was employed to design a water scheme for Beira.

The amalgamated Cape Town Municipality appointed the extremely capable David Lloyd-

Davies to head up its engineering department. He had to give his immediate attention to
sorting out the by now desperately urgent water shortage, and after considering various

options decided in favour of the Steenbras scheme. Stewart, W. A. Tait and Lloyd-Davies
formed the Board of Engineers responsible for the design of the dam and delivery pipeline,

and we can assume that most of the creative work was in Stewart’s hands.

Stewart’s services were much more than mere dam design, and involved hydraulics and

hydrology, as well as a decent grasp of finance and economics. And, if we are to judge from
his report to Wynberg on the proposed sewerage scheme, his written documents were models

of their kind.

In 1932, on the 50th anniversary of his arrival in South Africa, the leading local engineers

presented him with an illuminated address to mark the occasion, and to express their
admiration for the achievements of “the doyen of the profession in South Africa”. The

signatories were a galaxy of the leading practitioners of the times and include Kanthack,

George Stewart, Alfred Snape, and a young Ninham Shand, who was just starting out as a
consultant. (Fig. 3.28.) A further unusual honour came Stewart’s way in 1936 when the

President of the Institution of Civil Engineers in London wrote to him to express the
appreciation of the membership for his long and distinguished connection with the body. He

had in fact, while still a student, been awarded the Miller Prize for a paper entitled “The
Prevention of Waste in Water”, and later served as the Southern African representative on the