A dangerous smelter?

INVESTIGATIONS into environmental and health hazards posed by aluminium smelters in different parts of the world reveal a most disturbing picture. Apart from the damage to the area surrounding these plants, the effects of smelter emissions on the water supply and the health of plant workers and neighbouring residents are well documented and frightening. For these reasons we must wonder at the haste with which the government is proceeding to establish the proposed $1billion smelter at Union Estate, La Brea. It is worrying to think that Prime Minister Manning has gone ahead and signed a Memorandum of Understanding with ALCOA to construct this plant without seeing the necessity to bring such a controversial project to the nation’s parliament, to openly discuss the well-known dangers to workers and the surrounding public associated with such smelters and to detail what measures or conditions his government has imposed on ALCOA to ensure that the recorded afflictions do not occur at La Brea.

According to a statement by the state-owned National Energy Corporation, partners of ALCOA in this project, the smelter will be located on an 800-acred industrial site which would also “accommodate the establishment of heavy industrial plants that would utilise the abundant supplies of natural gas to produce a range of semi-finished and finished products to be used here and marketed abroad.” The purpose of the estate, of course, is an excellent one since there are many industries which can be set up there to manufacture products which would give added value to “our abundant supplies of natural gas.” But in light of its associated hazards, we must question first whether this small country should take the risk of building a smelter at all and, secondly, the wisdom of setting it up in the midst of industrial plants employing most likely thousands of workers.

This editorial does not provide the space in which to detail adequately the damage done by smelters in such countries as Australia, Canada, Russia and Iceland, together with the controversies and the vehement protests by environmentalists they have generated. As an example, let us then just refer to the episode connected with the Sosnovy Bor Aluminium Plant (SAP) scheduled to be built on the south coast of the Gulf of Finland (Baltic Sea) in Russia. The proposal provoked the protest of public environmental organisations from nine countries of the Baltic Sea region who, in a letter dated May 17, 2003, called on the World Bank “to examine very carefully the relevance and legitimacy of providing credit” for setting up the plant.

“We would like to ask you,” the letter read, “Is this a project to be supported by financial institutions which receive state funding to fight poverty and promote sustainable development.” The environmental organisations pointed out that “regional NGOs and local communities have already begun to question this project, demanding the assessment of its impact on health and the environment, and requesting public hearings and open debate about this project.” It is strange, in light of all of this, that the TT Government should remain silent about the serious public hazards associated with smelters, and see no need to hold a public debate over them. Where is the transparency that Mr Manning boasts about?