Aluminum Smelter in Trinidad - Environmental Dangers, Crime, Industrialization

'Bhopalising' Trinidad
By Julian Kenny
Tuesday, January 18th 2005

I do wish sometimes that instead of the post-Cabinet press conference of what is a usually a rotating foursome of a committee of Parliament, the substance of major announcements be read into the Hansard Record first in a sitting of Parliament, where constitutionally it properly belongs, subsequently printed in at least one newspaper so that we citizens may be fully informed, to be followed by a proper question time in Parliament. Instead we see snippets on the television news and fragments in the newspapers.

The question I have is: Are we preparing to "Bhopalise'' Trinidad? One fragment was that the environmental standards imposed by the US Environmental Protection Agency makes it difficult and costly for investors in that country to build certain types of plants (I think it was methanol).

More recent announcements included an increase in the size of the proposed aluminium smelter, as well as producing alumina from bauxite imported from Jamaica, Suriname and possibly Guyana, and the possibility of a mega DRI steel smelting plant that might just get us into the sheet metal business and, would you believe it as it appeared in one newspaper, "an entrée into the motor-car manufacturing industry", presumably producing the raw material (sheet steel) to be exported to countries which manufacture automobiles.

There is not a single industrial process that has ever been shown to be error-free, nor a machine type in the world that has proven to be 100 per cent reliable. There is always human error, mechanical failure and natural disaster. Trains will derail, planes and cars will crash, refineries will malfunction and explode, oil wells or pipelines will blow, oil tankers will spill tonnes of crude in accidents, citizens will have to be evacuated from hazardous gas clouds or fires-even in the United States of America. And all industrialisation will produce wastes, including toxic and hazardous wastes. If an industry finds it difficult to comply with its regulatory standards what is the solution? They "Bhopalise'' (direct foreign investment - invest where energy and labour is cheap, and regulatory standards minimal).

Now Bhopal. American investors established a company called Union Carbide India Ltd, which built a plant at Bhopal in north India manufacturing pesticides. Part of the process used a chemical called methyl isocyanate or MIC stored in tanks. On December 3, 1984 water came into contact producing a vast toxic gas cloud that swept though the sleeping city. According to Union Carbide (USA), the investor, 3,800 people died, approximately 40 people experienced permanent disability, and approximately 2,800 experienced partial disabilities. According to others 7,000 died within a matter of days and over the next 20 years a further 15,000 died and uncounted thousands were stricken with debilitating and chronic illnesses.

According to the experts investigating (Union Carbide experts, of course) water was deliberately introduced into the tank as all the safety measures were in place and operational, like at Three Mile Island! It does not say or conclude who did the dirty, nor why. About four and a half years later Union Carbide and Union Carbide India entered into a legal settlement with the Government of India of US$470 million, or from US$21,000 to US$124,000 per fatality (depending on actual fatalities).

The settlement was between the companies and the government of India-not the victims. Could this have happened in the United States of America? The Indian courts decided that the matter be settled in the Indian courts and not the American courts. Wonder why? Ask the question-should there be a mega-industrial disaster in Point Lisas or elsewhere in Trinidad and Tobago, will the victims be allowed to pursue their claims in American courts?

Now for the alumina plant and the aluminium smelter. The technologies have been around for some time. Producing metallic aluminium from aluminium oxide, or alumina as it is called, one of a few oxides, is essentially by electrolytic reduction, a process that demands vast quantities of cheap energy. Bauxites are a range of common minerals that are found in many parts of the earth's crust, containing various hydrated oxides of aluminium, as well as iron, titanium and silicon. If the deposit has a high enough concentration of the aluminium oxide, then it can be economically practical to extract it by a process of digestion in, guess what, sodium hydroxide, a highly corrosive chemical we know as lye, that can be purchased over the counter of many retail outlets.

While I suppose that the process can be managed relatively safely, it does produce varied wastes, and as innocuous as some may be, in vast quantities. The waste? Red mud. Production of a tonne of alumina from bauxite may generate up to two tonnes of red mud. I imagine that every geology student at Mona, had they been paying attention, will have noticed the vast, and sterile, red mud lake at the Rio Cobre. So the question is-if we are going to produce alumina to feed even a part of the requirements of a smelter plant with an annual output of 640,000 tonnes, what, pray, are we going to do with the red mud? Smelting of aluminium presents us with another type of waste problem. The electrolyte employed is a bath of molten fluoride compounds which is charged with alumina and through which the current passed, dissociating the alumina into metallic aluminium which settles to the bottom of the bath. The process produces oxygen, which combines with the carbon of the electrode to produce carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. A smelter produces between 40-60 kg of solid waste per tonne of aluminium. Just multiply 640,000 by say 50kg and the sum is - 32,000 tonnes of solid waste each year, containing fluorides to boot! Will this be shipped back to the United States? They after all have more land space per capita than we do.

My real worry is the relevance of the Environmental Management Authority. We now have a Cabinet decision to enter a memorandum of understanding with Alcoa to establish a plant of a particular capacity at a particular site before legally required procedures stated in the EM Act 2000 are followed. Metal smelting and processing requires a Certificate of Environmental Clearance, and this will certainly require a comprehensive Environmental Impact Assessment, and this is most important [Rule 5 (2)] consultation with non-governmental organisations and members of the public on the terms of reference of the EIA. After this is done, the results of the EIA have to be made accessible to the public and further public consultations permitted. Section 5 of the EM Act does however give the Minister responsible authority to issue special or general directions to the Authority. What if the EMA "talismans" the proposal? Buck it and you are out and compliant party puppets appointed. Accept it and you are in.

The Independent bench of the Senate can help to educate parliamentarians, and the public, while there is the always the possibility of appeal to the Environmental Commission, and, thanks to Ramesh Maharaj, the new element of public interest law in judicial review.