Alcoa Smelter in Trinidad - Environmental Dangers, Cedros, Chatham

World Environment Day-a postscript
Julian Kenny
Tuesday, June 7th 2005

Ten years have passed. And how many millions? And on the tenth anniversary there is a grand ritual of exhibitions, conferences, speeches, essays and green leaves-and unending talk, not a day, but a full week. Let us do a very rough accounting. Say $50 million for the Environmental Management Authority, $5 million for the Environmental Commission, add a few million or so from inputs from the Public Service, the IMA and the UWI, and add the CEPEP money sink. Conservatively we might be thinking of about $500 million.
This is all for environment management, protection and enhancement. Has anything changed in the past ten years? Just look at the hills above Dibe, or the haze over the Beetham slum, or the vehicles belching their fumes, or housing developments in the foothills of the western Northern Range, or Union Estate, where you will see the future.
Now go back and read Mark Meredith's article in the Sunday Express of May 22. No, he did not conduct the study. As a professional investigative journalist he merely presents reality. I refer to the Yale University-Columbia University 2005 Environmental Sustainability Index. We have made it into the big league of 146 countries indexed. Yes, we really are a total quality world-class nation. We are No. 1 in terms of percentage threats to biodiversity and almost made it No. 1 at the bottom of the index, No. 144 in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and No. 145 in terms of eco-efficiency. So now we are to have two smelters, one at Union Estate of 125,000 tonnes and another at Cap de Ville/Chatham of 325,000 tonnes, a total of 450,000 tonnes. What about the proposed iron and steel smelters? And we are told that downstream industries will be developed. How many and what products?
And where will the wastes go in this country of 260 persons per square kilometre. Not near Port of Spain and certainly not near San Fernando East. Fluorides? Spent pot liners? Anodes? Solid wastes? One would have thought that with the scale of this sort of industrialisation programme a responsible Government would have made the necessary statement to the Parliament and to the public.
Instead we have party paper piffle and glowing paid advertisements from state enterprises. The depths to which the technocrats will descend! Either silence, and a continued seat on the board, or the press conference at to say that the bulk of the complaints to the EMA are about noise and litter, while the "so-called experts" are summarily dismissed. One would have thought that the EMA might have devoted the entire World Environment Day to public conference on the implications of industrial development of the scale that has unfolded, including particularly-loss of agricultural lands, forests, biodiversity, and production of gaseous, liquid and solid wastes. Educate, and possibly shame, those responsible for the environmental degradation-the government and its acts of omission and commission.
We are still to have a comprehensive statement from Government on its industrialisation plans. But bearing in mind that we have been told that there will be a wave of industrialisation from La Brea to Icacos, and we already know of the three industrial estates at La Brea, Union and Cap de Ville/Chatham with an area of well over 3,000 acres or about five square miles, how much more land will be taken from there to Icacos? Another five square miles? Ten square miles? And the evidence shows that "development" involves clear felling forests and displacing entire communities, all approved by the Environmental Management Authority, as it continues to tell us of global warming and climate change, and about "Green Cities" and "Plan for the Planet", educating the public about the symptoms, but never the cause.
Frankly, what we really need is a plan for Trinidad and Tobago taking into account the limited space available, citizens' interests in all parts of the country, the resource base available and the alternatives available for attainable sustainable development.
Any plan must be in accordance with existing law, approved by Parliament following established procedures. The Town and Country Planning Act may be obsolete, but it is the law. Perhaps readers will now know why its proposed replacement, the Planning and Development of Land Bill, 15 years or more in preparation, once passed in the Senate and lapsed, is not likely to resurface.
It would, had it become law, have restricted the powers of the minister (read Cabinet), even to acquire private property. And perhaps readers will also understand why a Deputy Political Leader of the party in power sits on the board of the EMA, and why the NGC and NEC have carte blanche to burn the gas, acquire private property and clear forests, and why Alcoa is here. And the meaning of the Certificate of Environmental Clearance-bulldoze forests to raw earth and burn the trees!