Aluminum Smelter in Trinidad - Environmental Protest, Pollution, Health Risks

Oh no, Mr Overbey
Julian Kenny

You insult us citizens with your open letter and advertisement, in much the same way that the NGC celebrated, and insulted us, last World Environment Day, with its advertising puffery, showing a wall of forest and a quotation of that celebrated Scottish-American conservationist, John Muir, founder of Yosemite National Park and the Sierra Club - "The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness". NGC's core value is "preservation of the environment", having just created about a square mile of a lunar landscape at Union. That site was offered to Alcoa, now inadequate for your purpose. What hypocrisy! You need 2000 acres. Whatever science the Union Estate EIA revealed and whatever terms the CEC demanded are now irrelevant. You claim that the EIA process gives all the citizens the right and the opportunity to participate and be heard. Yes-and be honest-to be ignored.

The country is small and overcrowded, with a population density of about 10 times that of your country, and 100 times that of Canada and Australia where some of your smelters are located. In the past century there has been continuous environmental degradation, now clearly accelerating. Look around. The western Northern Range. The Caroni River. The Couva River. The Cipero River. Stand down wind of Pointe-a-Pierre and take a deep breath and take a walk toward the Guaracara River. Try to find the abandoned wells. Fly over the quarry pocked marked plains of Cumuto. Try to find the Clifton Hill beach. Look at the retreating forests and try to find the disappearing wildlife. Look at the declining catches in the Gulf of Paria. Find out how much food we import. And take a good look at the Government ghettoes and the fancy high rises. Sit in on a session of Parliament. Everything is grossly distorted.

In our greenhouse gas economy, it is an uncontestable fact that there are no legal standards for air quality or factory effluents in force, nor for toxic and hazardous materials, nor is the OSHA in force, not that I would suggest that Alcoa would deliberately want to operate a dirty business or generate a methyl isocyanate gas cloud. Indeed, the Alcoa executive (possibly it was you) who phoned me accepted my view that I did not think that a smelter produced the kinds of risks that ammonia, methanol and ammonium nitrate potentially posed, something that your EPA recognises. You are nevertheless here first for Alcoa's interests.

Forget the pretty pictures. Show in tabular form the standards that will be maintained, in particular emissions, effluents and wastes, and the quantities to be generated, and any toxic or hazardous wastes that may be produced. Low emissions are not the same as zero emissions.

Citizens in this country are well enough educated to deal with facts. And above all please confirm what will be done with spent pot liners - you indicated earlier in the Express that Alcoa had not decided what would be done with them-giving us citizens the tonnage over the life of the smelter. And while you are at it let us know what Alcoa will be paying for the natural gas supply, and, how much carbon dioxide will be released into the atmosphere from generation of electricity needed to produce the aluminium. It is, after all, a wasting asset and their patrimony. Citizens might just want to maximise benefits.

You must be scratching your head at what goes on in a Government cognisant of the rule of law. It is simple. There is a national physical development plan that designates land use. The area that is being offered to Alcoa in the Cap-de-Ville area is designated for intensive and moderately intensive agriculture. The Government is within its power to propose change to facilitate Alcoa, but it must go to the Parliament, where its puppet majority will authorise the change. But now it becomes even more complicated. The jep nest that you have stirred up may in fact turn out to be an angry marabunta swarm.

The Prime Minister has announced that the smelter will go ahead prior to conduct of the legally mandated processes, thus nullifying the EMA's power to deny a CEC, and sidelining this statutory authority. Any CEC granted will now be suspect. If denied the Board is fired. His deputy political leader, an attorney, sits on the EMA Board, and his Minister of the Environment, an attorney, both of whom I much respect, will, I am sure, support the rule of law. And I might add that I find it highly improper, and a conflict of interest, for you to make any reference whatsoever to the "open EIA process". This has arguably now become a sound case for the Judicial Review/Appeal Court/Privy Council route. A prime minister MAY NOT act in breach of any law.