Khadija Magardie
Residents of two tiny agricultural plots in Vanderbijlpark, an industrial town in the Vaal Triangle, will square up to iron and steel giant Iscor in the Johannesburg High Court early next week.
Armed with a battery of medical reports, lawyers for 16 residents of Steel Valley and Linkholm Agricultural Holdings hope to prove that pollutants from Iscor’s flagship plant, adjacent to their clients’ residential properties, have caused the inhabitants financial and physical ruin. Unusually, instead of asking for monetary damages, the applicants are asking the court to grind Iscor’s operations to a halt.
This they hope to do through an interdict stopping the company from discharging effluent which reaches residential boreholes via groundwater seepage; as well as relief from “excessive noise, malodorous smells and windblown dust containing noxious substances including asbestos emanating from Iscor’s premises”.
The last time Iscor was in court over its allegedly harmful business practices was in 1998, when a similar class action was launched by the Vaalhoewe Beskermingsgroep. But the case was settled out of court when Iscor agreed to buy up the properties. However, the latest litigation is unlikely to go away as easily.
This time the case rests on medical evidence allegedly proving the contamination from seepage pits, maturation dams and slag heaps at the Iscor plant. Counsel for the applicants will apply to the court to introduce as evidence the medical report of a practitioner who has conducted blood and urine tests on the applicants that “portray a very alarming profile of their health”. This will be bolstered by the report of a chemical engineer on the actual extent of the alleged pollution.
The applicants say they have been exposed to industrial effluent via their groundwater, pumped from boreholes. Because most are either subsistence or small-scale farmers, the water is for domestic, livestock, agricultural and leisure use. In the court papers the applicants list several other effects of the plant, including excessive noise from the pumping station, bad smells and dust gathering in their homes from nearby slag heaps. They also say the pollution has devalued their properties.
They argue that Iscor acknowledged its responsibility in polluting the area, both “verbally” and “by conduct”, pointing to the fact that over the years Iscor has been buying up properties of residents in the area for an amount “in excess of R75-million”. In addition, the company has, for several years, contracted Rand Water to supply drinking water to certain plot holders as a substitute for polluted water in their boreholes. This, residents say, is an indication that Iscor knows it is polluting the water.
But in its answering papers, Iscor denies it has been polluting the plots. In a highly technical legal argument that, among other things, argues that some of the applicants’ affidavits were illegible, and that the evidence annexed to the affidavits by the chemical engineer and practitioner are unsigned and thus inadmissible in court, Iscor’s lawyers say the company is already taking “all reasonable measures” to prevent pollution.
Calling the relief sought “untenable” and “without legal foundation” the company’s lawyers both deny the applicants have suffered ill-health as a result of the water, and that their plant was the source.
Referring to the company buying out 90% of the plots in the area and providing free water to others, it slams the application, saying: “The facts they [the applicants] rely on relate to a possible past invasion of rights and not to the present-day situation.” Accusing the applicants of bringing the application for “ulterior motives”, namely to get more money for their properties, Iscor argues that any order compelling it to immediately stop all forms of pollution “will result in no immediate relief” and will “have a disastrous detrimental economical effect”.