Aluminum Smelter in Trinidad - Environmental Dangers, Crime, Industrialization

An icy blast from Kárahnjúkar
Part 1 Mark Meredith
Sunday, March 27th 2005

57 sq km of Iceland's Kárahnjúkar, "the largest remaining pristine wilderness in Western Europe . . . a vast panorama of wild rivers, waterfalls, brooding mountains and mossy highlands thick with flowers", will be submerged beneath 150 m of water to bu
You may be hard pressed to imagine what Iceland and Trinidad have in common. You know it isn't the weather. The answer is aluminium. Smelting, to be specific, by Alcoa Inc, the worlds largest aluminium producer. In the last 20 years Alcoa has not built a new smelter, but now it is to build two: in Iceland and Trinidad.
In fact, there are plenty of similarities between that freezing island nation and our own sweltering one. But at the core is aluminium, the product of a process some believe deserves much greater scrutiny than it gets.
Alcoa's 322,000-ton smelter in eastern Iceland at Reydarfjoerdur which the company call Fjardaal ("aluminium of the fjords"), will be powered by what Alcoa call a "renewable" energy resource - hydroelectric power.
Our 325,000 ton proposed aluminium smelter at Cap de Ville/Chatham - which will be as advanced as Iceland's - will be powered by a limited and non-renewable energy resource - natural gas.
According to Forbes Magazine, Alcoa is negotiating a rate in Trinidad of lower than 1.5 cents per kilowatt-hour, versus an average 2.5 cents in the United States.
Forbes headlines its June 2004 article "The Cosmopolitan Touch" on Alcoa and new chairman Alain JP Belda: "How to make money smelting aluminum: Shut down US plants and open operations in China and Trinidad."
A major difference between Alcoa's operation in Trinidad and the one in Iceland's land of glaciers and geothermal energy is that the Iceland project is well advanced and is due for completion in 2007. Though Alcoa have recently run into a hiccup or two.
It has been hugely controversial, in Iceland and abroad. The mother of Icelandic pop star Bjork went on hunger strike in protest in a blaze of publicity.
However, when people talk of Alcoa's US$ 1 billion-plus Icelandic project, they don't refer to it as Fjardaal - but Kárahnjúkar, after the land that is to be drowned to produce hydroelectric power for Alcoa's one aluminium smelter. The electricity will be carried by powerlines over the Icelandic wilderness 50 km distant to Reydarfjoerdur.
The Kárahnjúkar Hydropower Project will submerge under 150 feet of water a 57 sq km swathe of what the UK Guardian termed "the largest remaining pristine wilderness in Western Europe"; describing the area as "a vast panorama of wild rivers, waterfalls, brooding mountains and mossy highlands thick with flowers."
The overall impacts of Kárahnjúkar, say its critics, will affect over 3,000 sq km, or three per cent of Iceland's total landmass.
Precious land and losing it to Alcoa's smelters is the big similarity between our two island nations, except that we have considerably less of it to spare -Trinidad (1,864 sq miles) would fit into Iceland (39,756 sq miles) over 21 times.
As you might expect, the land to be lost in these islands of ice and humidity are very different in ecology, and size for that matter. Though each, it could be argued, is as important as the other. But that may not matter.
There's an icy warning from Kárahnjúkar blowing down the necks of the Cedros and Icacos communities, if they did but know it.
"Environmentalists in Iceland and abroad have looked on in disbelief as the project has proceeded, sidestepping one obstacle after another, driven by a government seemingly determined to push it through, whatever the cost to nature or the economy," says the 2003 UK Guardian article on Kárahnjúkar, "Power Driven".
If this sounds vaguely familiar, it should. Both Iceland and Trinidad have governments in thrall to mega-projects, both possessing planning/regulatory agencies that sometimes have little say in final planning decisions; islands where sound advice goes unheeded.
"Kárahnjúkar - a Project on Thin Ice" is a 2003 report published by the International Rivers Network (IRN) in cooperation with the Iceland Nature Conservation Association, Friends of the Earth International, and the CEE Bankwatch Network.
It was used by 120 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) from 47 countries to urge international financial institutions, such as the European Investment Bank, not to get involved in the Kárahnjúkar project.
The report condemns Kárahnjúkar "as an example of old-style, Government-promoted heavy industrialisation" with "serious environmental impacts". It faces "considerable geological, economic and legal risks", and will result in "annual losses of $36 million", they warn.
To power Alcoa's smelter, a series of nine dams are being built at Kárahnjúkar, the main dam being 190m high and 730m wide. The Joekulsa a Bru and Joekulsa and Fljoetsdal rivers and a series of smaller rivers to the North of the Vatnajoekull Glacier, Europe's largest, will be dammed or diverted.
Three reservoirs will be created, the largest of which is the Halslon that will cover a 57 sq km area. Seven channels, and 16 tunnels running for a total of 70km will divert rivers to the "powerhouse".
These river diversions and engineering works will impact an area over 2,900 sq km, say IRN, partially flooding one of Iceland's most spectacular canyons, Dimmugljufur, "Iceland's Grand Canyon". It was dynamited on live TV, just before elections. Opponents of Kárahnjúka say the message was, "this is something you cannot stop".
Some 60 waterfalls and "invaluable" geographical features will vanish in the reservoir or be spoilt by river diversions.
IRN say the area is one of the largest continuous vegetated regions over 5,000 to 6,000 metres above sea level in Iceland's Central Highlands, with examples of rare and protected vegetation and wildlife.
The Kárahnjúka project will impact the habitats of seals, reindeer, pink-footed geese, and migratory fish such as Atlantic salmon, arctic char and trout, says IRN. Rare and endangered lichens and mosses are threatened.
Erosion, siltation, and fluctuation of water levels in the Halslon reservoir leaving dried mud to be whipped up by wild Icelandic winds, will affect areas far outside the actual project area, they warn. This will impact the grazing lands of Iceland's reindeer with the possibility of local extinction of the species.
The choice of a massive dam site at Kárahnjúkar was attacked by the former director of Iceland's Nordic Volcanic Insitute, Gudmundur Sigvaldson.
The dam site "is located near the most volcanically productive area on Earth", he warned. "Any prudent political authority would never consider to stake huge amounts of taxpayers' money on a project built on such dubious grounds."
Alcoa say the Kárahnjúka Project and smelter will combat global warming, since they are using a "renewable" energy resource, hydropower, rather than fossil fuels. IRN argue Alcoa's argument is "spurious".
They say that the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development does not include hydropower as renewable. Further, they say that the irreversible negative impacts to soil, water, vegetation, and wildlife are not sustainable or renewable in the case of Kárahnjúka.
They point out that because of Alcoa's smelter, Iceland was able to negotiate an exemption clause under the Kyoto Protocol in 2001.
As Iceland's National Power Company Landsvirkjun - who are developing the Kárahnjúkar Power Plant at a cost of US$1,086 million - itself pointed out in January 2003, through this exemption "the international community has allowed Iceland to increase its emissions by up to 60 per cent (more than any other country), thereby accommodating the Alcoa project".
Tetrafluoromethane and hexafluoroethane, two greenhouse gases emitted by aluminium smelters, have global warming potentials that are 6,500-9,200 times higher than the carbon dioxide that they also produce in great quantities. These PFCs can remain in the atmosphere for 50,000 years.
Iceland's Environmental and Food Agency had to raise the limit for the emission of fluorides - one of the most potent greenhouse gases - because Alcoa could not meet the proposed lower limit, say IRN. Flouride emissions around the world have caused serious problems for public health, agriculture and wildlife, they add.
In Iceland Alcoa has managed to achieve an environmental licence for sulphur dioxide emissions of 12 kg per ton of aluminium produced. In comparison, the World Health Organisation guidelines for Europe define a sulphur dioxide limit of 5 kg/ton, and the US EPA 8 kg/ton, say IRN.
An aluminium smelter that Norsk Hydro planned to build at the same location would have emitted only 0.455 kg/ton - by using emission-reducing "wet scrubbers", which Alcoa will not be using.
Or put another way, Norsk Hydo's proposed 420,000 ton smelter would have emitted 190 tons of sulphur dioxide a year, while Alcoa's 322,000 ton smelter will emit nearly 3,900 tons per year, say IRN.
IRN say that Landsvirkjun has plans to develop additional dams which would allow Iceland's smelting capacity to increase more than fivefold, making it the largest producer of aluminium in Western Europe. With Kárahnjúkar complete, 80 per cent of Iceland's total energy output would be used to smelt aluminium.
In part 2 in tomorrow's Express, MARK MEREDITH looks at other similarities these islands of snow and sunshine share.