Aluminum Smelter in Trinidad - Environmental Dangers, Crime, Industrialization

Integrated ecosystems vs competitive exclusion
Julian Kenny
Tuesday, April 5th 2005

"Ecosystem" means a dynamic complex of plant, animal and micro-organism communities and their non-living environment interacting as a functional unit.
-Article 2, United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity.
I suppose that I must try to understand one of the comments attributed to Mr Overbey, the spokesperson for Alcoa in his interview with Mark Meredith in the Express. He could equally well have said that the proposed smelter could also be integrated into Tucker Valley or even the Caroni lands. Yes, he suggests that Alcoa is such an environmentally responsible multinational that it will integrate the smelter into the "ecosystem". If it is so easily done without negative effects, as one Chathamite asked, why not establish the smelter in the United States?
But I must digress somewhat. In an e-mail from an Alcoa executive to a local NGO it was stated, "We have not applied for CEC for a refinery. We have applied for a CEC to build a smelter. We've said this in the media and said it publicly. Red mud is a refinery waste and not a smelter waste. I'm not sure why Dr Kenny has not grasped that point but that's it."
Clearly the smear is that Dr Kenny must be a dimwit and is unable to grasp a simple fact! The explanation to the NGO was that Alcoa was not setting up an alumina plant but an aluminium smelter. The only communications I have ever had were a telephone conversation with Alcoa (they called me) where it was explained that only a smelter was being considered and that it was the Government of T&T that wanted the alumina plant (confirmed by the party newspaper). Why should Alcoa tell me this? The other was an unsolicited e-mail from the National Gas Company that an Assistant Professor of Medicine from Yale (the equivalent of an Assistant Lecturer at UWI) was retained by Alcoa to explain to the citizens in Chatham that aluminium smelting was safe and that there would be no health risks for the community. Why not UWI?
Note also that Dr McIntosh of the EMA in a recent CCN interview confirmed that the EMA had not in fact received an application for a smelter in the proposed Cap de Ville/Chatham industrial estate, which is yet to be subjected to the full legal process.
But back to some elementary ecology. In much the same way that I explained in my column some weeks ago the differences between alumina refining and aluminium smelting and the wastes produced (the Alcoa executive in the telephone conversation complimented me for my knowledge of both processes), I refer readers to the accepted definition above of the term "ecosystem", derived from the science of ecology, now part of an United Nations Convention, and one to which this country is party. I suggest also that readers also reflect on the meaning of the term "integrate", which in this case is to make whole. Mr Overbey tells Mr Meredith that Alcoa is to integrate the smelter into the ecosystem. Pray tell, what integration is he talking about? An ecosystem is not a place.
What Mr Overbey is actually and unwittingly talking about is another less well-known ecological concept called "competitive exclusion". Can he not grasp this? The concept generally applies to the introduction of an exotic species, either deliberately or naturally, into the range of another related species. The exotic, in this case a smelter, in its competition for the resources of the ecosystem, space, displaces the biota.
Clearing 2,000 acres of land at Cap de Ville/Chatham will have profound effects on the existing ecosystem that consists of mixed human settlements, infrastructure, varied agricultural enterprises, and forests and wetlands of different kinds, in what could qualify under our laws as a Sensitive Area.
Ecology tells us that there is a relationship between size of area and biological diversity and that when size of any ecosystem is reduced, there is inevitable reduction of diversity. Clearing the Cap de Ville/Chatham area for the smelter will result in irreplaceable loss and reduction of diversity that we are treaty bound to conserve. There will be no integration, only exclusion and diversity loss.
Let the Chatham children of the next generation do the sum. Three square miles of a total 1,864 is about 0.2 per cent of the land, or possibly about 10 per cent of the peninsula! For what? The profitability of Alcoa and dividends for shareholders. And the Chathamites will be relocated to ghettoes. And Mr Manning's ministers and advisers tell us of his "sovereignty" and the need for a "boss man", while the Board of the EMA is in his pocket, the Parliament neutered, the cocktail circuit conservationists bought, and he claims that he cannot "interfere" with the process, having initiated it. The 3,000 citizens of Chatham must now surely know that they matter less than the 15 or 20 Breakfast Shed proprietors.