The controversial industrial development of Saldanha Bay, near the west coast wetlands, is more about politics than about the environmental impact of a steel mill, writes Neville Sweijd
THE decision of Lampie Fick, Western Cape MEC for Environment and Tourism, to rezone a farm on the Saldanha Bay coast from agricultural to industrial land has given the Saldanha Steel Project the go-ahead — despite a recommendation against this decision by the Steyn Commission of Inquiry. The decision, and the consequent re-emergence of Iscor in the project, does not bode well for the future of development in the province.
Fick has attempted to bulldoze the process through since it became public in April this year. Only the intervention of the National Parliamentary Standing Committee on the Environment managed to slow him by forcing the appointment of the commission. But the fact that the objectors (and the commission) never opposed the development in principle, but only its location, begs the question why he was so determined.
The answer is clearly political. The National Party is desperate to achieve above-average economic growth in its only province and this project represents the cornerstone of “the biggest single industrial development this country has ever seen”. The prize is worth the risk of stomping on eminent experts and their arguments in the scramble to get this heartland up and running for the next general election.
The claim that the Steyn Commission’s recommendation to move the plant inland is being fulfilled by building it on another part of the same farm renders some 3 000 pages of evidence to the commission redundant. The “compromise” was secretly negotiated with selected parties, ignoring the broad-ranging chorus of objectors who gave evidence in good faith to the three-month-long commission.
If Fick had announced that he was rejecting the commission’s recommendation, he would have needed to explain why.
Iscor, still in alliance with remnants of the old regime and wanting a refuge from African National Congress-controlled regional governments, threatened complete withdrawal from the project if government did not bend. Iscor could not afford to move because its approach (ordering equipment, developing its chosen site and hired staff) committed it to that specific site. Moving inland would have meant new plans, another environmental impact assessment (EIA) and several cancelled contracts.
The Campaign for Saldanha is in fact in a worse position than when we started. It appears that Iscor plans to employ a different technology to the one assessed in the original EIA, using scrap (and its complement of heavy metals) instead of iron ore. Now, we have no idea of what the environmental impact of the new technology will be.
Anglo-Alpha’s cement factory (on the farm adjacent to the Saldanha Steel Project) and the extension of the cargo quay in the harbour, both contingent on the steel project’s going ahead, are the subject of separate EIAs — despite being part of a single industrial complex. There are several other plants planned for the same development whose EIAs are yet to be commissioned. This reveals the strategy of compartimentalising EIAs in order to minimalise the cumulative environmental impact of the
Another strategy is to neutralise objectors by co-opting them into this process. As in the case of the Saldanha Steel Project EIA, comments are called for, duly noted and then relegated to an appendix in the final report.
This approach is particularly frightening in the face of the recent Industrial Development Corporation announcement that it wants to turn the Saldanha Region into the Ruhr Valley of South Africa. It is not the environmentalists who are pitting conservation against development; it is, in fact, the industrialists and government who refuse to accept the responsibility of finding middle ground.
The World Wide Fund for Nature and National Parks Board gave the Steyn Commission evidence in opposition to the siting of the steel mill. Although the commission found in their favour, these organisations later sided with Fick’s decision.
One is left wondering about the effectiveness of these institutions’ ability to protect even their own interests and can only assume that their capitulation had to do with relationships and personalities. This issue has caused ructions in the parks board which is undergoing its own transformation. Its outgoing chief, Naas Steenkamp, is an NP appointee who served on the Gencor board with Bernard Smith (chairman of the Saldanha Steel Project and erstwhile director of Mossgas).
The CSIR, which is conducting the EIAs, has gone so far as to state that a broader strategic environmental assessment is appropriate for Saldanha so that planning for the region can follow a more thought-through path.
The CSIR is effectively protesting against the process that it has been co-opted into. This plea is made in the Portnet EIA in which the study of the effects of the cargo quay extension has been isolated from that of the effects of the oil storage facility in the harbour.
The Saldanha community enthusiastically awaits this development. Unfortunately they have opted to select what they want to believe, listen only to those who supported the project and pulled the class/race card on anyone who threatened their position. Ultimately what they will get is short-term gain which will result in long-term problems.
Clearly, the only way to prevent degradation of the environment, conserve natural assets and promote biodiversity, is to raise the standard of living and develop infrastructure so that the urgently needed sustainable development can be properly managed. The political opportunism which has been manifested in Saldanha is an example of the antithesis of this principle.
Neville Sweijd is a member of the Campaign for