Have you ever woken gagging from the nauseating pong of pollution? For many people, this is a daily occurrence. They wake to the rotten-egg stink of sulphur and they go to bed under a cloud of smog. Their children play in parks where the plants are dead from acid rain. Asthma is a common ailment in these neighbourhoods. And they get little protection against these noxious fumes from an outdated piece of law created 40 years ago.
According to the environmental lobbyist Earthlife Africa, South Africa is one of the six biggest polluters in the world.
But now the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism (DEAT) wants to give affected communities the relief they have sought for so long. The new National Environmental Management: Air Quality Bill, expected to be approved by Parliament later this year, aims to create air quality standards and regulate emissions.
Once the Air Quality Bill is signed into law, factories that continue to allow dangerous chemicals and gases to escape into the atmosphere will have to change their ways or face stiff penalties. Factories may even be closed down if they are deemed to be repeat offenders.
Although initiated last year, the Bill was not processed by Parliament prior to the 2004 elections and has yet to receive the sanction of the newly elected Parliament. DEAT is already proposing amendments to the draft to strengthen the legislation.
This new law will replace the outdated Atmospheric Pollution Prevention Act (APPA) of 1965, which was based on 1915 British legislation. Using an approach known as the ‘best practicable means” and focusing largely on single-point source emission controls, APPA has allowed the development of air pollution ‘hotspots” around the country.
Dr Crispian Olver, director general of DEAT, has said APPA also provides little in the way of sanctioning non-compliance. As a result, there are few incentives for industry to reduce its polluting atmospheric emissions.
‘Poor air quality is costing South Africans millions of rands in health care costs and losses in production due to respiratory illness related absenteeism,” he added. ‘Unacceptable air quality in areas perfectly suited to further industrial development is effectively stopping development of those areas.”
‘The fundamental difference between the new Bill and the old APPA is that it addresses the adverse impacts of emissions into the environment and sets stricter standards for ambient air,” said Itumeleng Mabalane, director: air quality management for DEAT.
The Air Quality Bill also provides for environmental impact studies and a participatory process with communities before any refineries or potentially polluting factories may be set up.
‘I feel quite strongly about the Air Quality Bill,” Marthinus van Schalkwyk, Minister of Environment and Tourism, told Earthyear. ‘The Bill will aim both to reduce emissions and to bring air quality in 50% of identified pollution hotspots under control in the near future.”
He said many people could testify about the consequences of having to live with dirty air day after day, with the attendant suffering from asthma and related respiratory problems.
‘Just as an example, children who live close to some of the industries and factories are permanently damaged for life because of the quality of air they are forced to breathe,” he said. ‘I feel strongly that we need stronger standards in that regard.”
Ultimately, the Bill will mean that ‘our sons and daughters will no longer need to grow up under the impression that brown and grey is the natural colour of our South African skyline,” said Van Schalkwyk.
He had told Parliament about a number of hotspots where people lived downwind from polluting industries. For them, winter is a difficult time. The hotspots include Milnerton in Cape Town, Durban’s South Basin and parts of the Highveld; in particular, Sasolburg. He predicted that once the Bill was signed into law, it would reduce emissions and rapidly bring air quality ‘in all identified pollution hotspots under control”.
Van Schalkwyk stressed that it was not acceptable for the health of children and families to suffer because they could not afford to live in less polluted areas.
‘The Bill will pave the way for establishing a comprehensive air quality management system in South Africa. It will establish a scientific basis for identifying our most polluted air and our most guilty polluters.
‘Most importantly, [the Bill] will provide teeth for environmental protection, empowering all spheres of government to act against those whose greed and carelessness attacks the very air we breathe,” he said.
Provincial and local air quality officers will be appointed to sniff out transgressors, and they should expect no mercy from his department, the minister warned.
Peter Lukey, who heads the Green Scorpions, will be one of the officers going after smelly culprits. What will give this legislation its power is a system of penalties that will serve both as a deterrent and to encourage compliance. ‘We want to ensure that the punishment fits the crime”, he said.
‘If factories don’t want to listen, they should be fined,” says Richard Worthington of Earthlife Africa. He believes pollution tax will not only make factories think twice about releasing toxic substances into the atmosphere, but that it would also prompt a search for ways to improve air quality.
Critics say it has taken too long for the Bill to be processed and that the delay has caused uncertainty. Meanwhile, affected communities continue to suffer and to be denied their fundamental constitutional right to a pollution-free environment, says Paul Skivington, a director at Alexander Forbes Risk Services, which is responsible for enterprise-wide risk management. ‘The greatest problem is created by uncertainty— and ambiguity,” he warns.
Praising the new legislation, Skivington added that, although environmental legislation is generally welcomed by the broader community as everyone wants a cleaner, safer environment, some industrialists hold the view that there is inevitably a conflict between the environment, competitiveness and economic viability.
‘This would be true if legislation were the only factor that changes, but in today’s dynamic environment, it is only one of many variables, which include technological processes and products, as well as customer needs and expectations,” he said. ‘Often changes in legislation stimulate forward-looking industries to innovate and improve the quality of their processes and products, and to respond better to the demands of their customers.”
He believes that a truly competitive industry is more likely to take up new environmental legislation as a challenge and respond with innovation. ‘An uncompetitive industry, on the other hand, may not be orientated toward innovation, and be tempted to fight all new environmental legislation.”
A greater level of cooperation between regulators, communities and industry has obvious benefits for all parties, rather than wasting time and resources in fighting about new legislation, as is often the case. Both activists and industry should welcome this approach, as it is in no-one’s interests to create unfeasible legislation.
The link between air pollution and respiratory problems has been well demonstrated. In a European study, Norwegian researchers found that men living in badly polluted areas are far more likely to develop lung cancer. The study monitored over 16 000 men for almost three decades. The research found that the stronger the concentration of nitrogen dioxide, the greater the risk of developing the disease. In similar South African studies, shocking revelations were made about the links between lung diseases and pollution.
One company that will need to dig deeply into its pockets once this Bill is promulgated will be the Caltex refinery in Milnerton. The refinery is one of the chief polluters in Cape Town. In May 2002, Caltex was fined R50 000 for building two sulphur- processing plants at the refinery without a permit.
In July this year, Milnerton residents were disgusted to find a foul, oily rain transforming their cars, houses and pets into a black mess. Van Schalkwyk was also appalled by this oil-rain and the way Caltex handled the crisis. He has threatened not to renew Caltex’s permit.
The refinery and the industry in general have ‘fundamental responsibilities towards the community”, he warned.
Although Caltex has apologised for the incident, the community is livid. For them, it is the final straw and they now hope the new law will finally give them the means with which to discipline Caltex.
The Lung Institute at the University of Cape Town’s Medical School has done a study in the northern suburbs. It found a high incidence of asthmatic symptoms and allergies among children between the ages of 11 and 14.
A total of 3 162 children from 17 schools who live in the area north of Boundary Road in Milnerton were examined. Of these, 23,7% had suffered bouts of asthma, while 64,6% had experienced hayfever.
Andy Birkenshaw, chairperson of the Table View Residents’ Association and the air monitoring task team of the northern communities, says the community is disgusted by Caltex’s conduct. But up to now nothing has happened to stop the air pollution.
The association has been campaigning against what it claims are unacceptably high levels of pollution, which have been emitted by the Caltex oil refinery for years. The association and others have been complaining to Parliament for the past 10 years.
The South Durban Basin, which stretches south from Durban’s docks, has also been a pollution hotspot for a long time. Every day residents breathe in a cocktail of 24 deadly chemicals — unsurprisingly dubbed ‘Durban poison”. This community also exhibits a high incidence of cancer and respiratory illnesses. Recent research indicates that up to half the community suffers from asthma, and has a leukaemia rate 24 times the national average
Many residents of the suburbs of Wentworth, Merebank and the Bluff were moved into the area during the apartheid era. Mostly low-income earners, about 270 000 people live under a fog of air pollution emanating from the nearby, dilapidated industrial infrastructure of the South Durban Basin.
As in Cape Town, oil refineries are the main polluters. Shell, in partnership with BP, owns one of the two oil refineries in this industrial belt. Engen owns the other. And, as in Milnerton, this community’s voice is loud about the bad air they are forced to endure.
Community activists have long been unhappy about the state of the area, especially what they call the factories’ disregard for the surrounding communities. Some even bought shares in the companies to ensure that their voices would be heard.
In 2003, Desmond D’Sa, the volunteer chairperson of the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance, attended an overseas meeting as a new shareholder to complain about Shell’s disregard for the environment in his community.
‘In South Durban, multinationals like Shell seem to be above the law. Multinationals that pollute with impunity have never been prosecuted or penalised in South Africa,” D’Sa told Earthyear shortly after returning from the meeting
The Alliance claims the Shell/BP refinery pumps up to 45 tonnes of sulphur dioxide into the South Durban atmosphere every day. Although the refinery admitted in 2000 that it had been under-reporting its sulphur dioxide emissions, regulation by government authorities has been virtually non-existent.
Community activists say the outdated APPA is itself a culprit, as under it the oil refineries have carte blanche.
But things are slowly changing for South Durban residents. While the new Bill gives them fresh hope, the factories have also started to clean up, with help from DEAT. The department has been instrumental in creating a South Durban Basin multi-point plan, which includes a management system for the improvement of air quality. The plan involves representatives for the residents, industry players and all three tiers of government.
The project has already earned accolades for innovation in multi-stakeholder relations in the most improved category of the Mail & Guardian‘s Greening the Future Awards.
At the awards ceremony in June, Minister van Schalkwyk praised the project and told the audience that it is a project his department will continue ‘to champion, and an issue that is at the top of our agenda. Between this project and the new legislation, it is hoped to improve air quality in the South Durban Basin to levels beyond those which the World Health Organisation considers acceptable.”