South Africa 
Legal action against reported polluter explored in SA

Misanet.com / IPS, 19 April - The thought of being relocated here in this country usually conjures up memories of the past apartheid government which forced people of different races to live in separate neighbourhoods. But the residents of the low-income mixed-race community known as Aloes, just north of this coastal city, could not be happier that they are being moved four kilometres away.

Pinned between a medical waste incinerator and one of South Africa's largest hazardous waste sites, hundreds of Aloes residents are finally getting their wish to be moved away from the pollution that began decades ago under the apartheid government.

With the help of the nation's Human Rights Commission and the city government, residents like 78-year-old Daniel Pienaar, who have long argued that the pollution has caused cancer, tuberculosis and asthma, say they are looking forward to living in a cleaner environment.

- We are so happy to get out of here and get away from the terrible smells, says Pienaar, one of the oldest residents of the Aloes settlement known as Vermaak, who began living here before the waste site was constructed. "We are pleased to leave the sickness behind," says Pienaar, who came here in 1949 to work on constructing the nearby railroad.

While the people of Aloes are perceived by many in the area, including the company operating the waste site, as temporary "squatters" because their housing is constructed of scrap metal and wood, most residents claim to have lived here for decades.

Pienaar explains that people from a mixed racial background, known in South Africa as "coloureds" and members of the Xhosa indigenous group of South Africa began settling in this region around 70 years ago to work in the area's brick making factories.

In 1974, after the community was settled, the first half of the existing hazardous waste site located a couple hundred metres from the community began accepting liquid industrial waste from around the country.

Despite claims by Waste Tech, which once owned the site, and local officials that the hazardous material was safely contained by the naturally occurring clay bed lying underneath the site, liquid waste containing heavy metals and other potentially harmful chemicals began to ooze out of the unlined 8.6 hectare site and the surrounding liquid waste ponds.

- Toxic liquid waste was found running down the stormwater gully into the communities and was emerging from the ground close to houses, says Joan Couldridge, a local environmental activist who has been calling on the city government to monitor the air and ground water quality near the site.

Even as Aloes residents were protesting against the pollution, the site was expanded to include a medical waste incinerator in the early 1990s and the waste dump was enlarged. The chimney of the medical waste incinerator, which normally emits harmful chemicals known as dioxins and furans, was at the same level as the houses of Vermaak.

- They started burning all sorts of things with very bad smells, says Pienaar. "As a result of this pollution a lot of people in this area are now dead but no authorities ever listened to us." 

With the change in government in 1994, the community and environmentalists like Couldridge began heavily lobbying the new officials to help the residents of Aloes. After several letters to the Human Rights Commission, some officials began to take serious notice of the pollution at Aloes. In 1998, when the Commission held "poverty hearings" across the country, residents of Aloes spoke out against the apartheid government, saying it allowed the pollution to continue in their community because they were not white.

In 1999, an independent consulting firm, Health in Industrial Occupations, did some air quality sampling around the site and found levels of chemicals known to cause cancer, such as benzene, as well as about a dozen other potentially hazardous substances, including formaldehyde, tetrachloroethylene and toluene.

While no tests have yet proven that the health problems experienced by Aloes was a result of pollution, the publicity surrounding contamination was enough to stop EnviroServ, the company that now owns the site, from operating the incinerator in 1998. Since then, the hazardous waste sites no longer accept toxic waste.

Alistair McClain, the former CEO of EnviroServ, Africa's largest privately owned waste management company, denies that the company was negligent and says that it is not responsible for relocating the residents of Aloes. "People who are squatting need to be moved and they should have been moved a long time ago by the government," says McClain.

While the government of Port Elizabeth is now fulfilling the community's wish to be relocated, the Human Rights Commission is exploring the possibility of taking legal action against EnviroServ and the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry for allowing the company to pollute.

- We came to the conclusion that EnviroServ was not complying with our legislation, says Jerry Nkeli, one of the Human Rights Commissioners. "The company has been getting away with a lot of substandard services."

The Legal Resources Centre, a prominent law firm that doubles as a non-governmental organisation, was asked by the Commission last year to produce a legal opinion on the its litigation options against EnviroServ and the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry.

The opinion, written by Ellen Nicol, a lawyer with the Centre, says that it is essential that medical assessments of residents be completed before the communities are relocated. Without such evidence, linking the pollution to health problems could be lost, it explains. "It is important that the investigations regarding health impacts must be done as quickly as possible before epidemiological evidence disappear," says the opinion.

While the Ford Foundation has provided funds for medical assessments, including blood and bone sampling, the testing has not begun, and the community is scheduled to be relocated as early as October.

Pienaar, who is now living off a modest government pension, says for him and others at Aloes the important thing is that plans are underway to move people away from the waste they believe is poisoning them. "People are so happy that they keep going over to have a look at where they'll be living," he says.

By Danielle Knight

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