Corporate filth devastating SA

SURVEY: FIRMS’ ENVIRONMENT-CRIME RATE IS TOO HIGH

Possible sanctions and criminal investigation of environmental abuses by Samancor, Xstrata, Highveld Steel, Scaw Metals, BHP Billiton, ArcelorMittal, Foskor and Eskom.

ompanies like Samancor, Xstrata, Highveld Steel, Scaw Metals, BHP Billiton, ArcelorMittal, Foskor, Eskom’s Camden power station face sanction and possible criminal investigations over environmental issues.

This is according to the National Compliance and Enforcement Report for the Environmental Management Inspectorate, released by the department last week. The report shows that there was a 60% increase in the number of compliance inspections – in both the biodiversity sector and the industrial sector – in the past year with officials reaching 2766 sites, up from 1724 the year before.

Because the job is so vast officials have been strategic in their use of resources and have targeted certain industrial sectors. These include ferro-alloy, steel and iron; refineries; cement; paper and pulp; health care risk waste; hazardous landfi ll sites; and power generation.

Of these dirty industries there has been an improvement in compliance in the cement sector but the report notes that it will take time and resources to clean up many of the facilities in the ferroalloy, steel and iron industries.

More inspections meant an increase in the violations detected. Detected violations jumped from 1 116 to 2 482 in 2012-13.

Melissa Fourie, director of the Centre for Environmental Rights notes that 524 of these violations were serious enough to justify enforcement action. “Measure that against the 160 (environmental) authorisations that were actually monitored by officials and it gives you a back-of-cigarette box average of more than three serious violations per authorisation,” she says.

The Inspectorate is increasingly inclined to prosecute offenders – including directors. The number of criminal dockets registered has gone from 718, to 1 080 to 1 488 in this most recent report.

The number of dockets leading to prosecution jumped 33% to 268. “It is likely that this increase represents early dividends from the significant investment in training by the Inspectorate,” Fourie says.

However, Marius Diemont, an environmental lawyer with Webber Wentzel believes the decrease in convictions is concerning. “We cannot assume this means an increase in compliance.”

In certain cases companies are cleaning up their acts. Both the PetroSA refinery in Mossel Bay and Sasol’s Secunda refinery were serial offenders between 2007 and 2010. At this point though the DEA is satisfied the refineries are complying with the law.

In other instances levels of non-compliance are high. Samancor Middelburg has various noncompliance notices issued against it which are all criminal offences under environmental legislation.

Samancor appears to have taken steps to redress the problems in Middleburg. But at its ferro chrome plant in Limpopo a criminal case is being investigated.

Highveld Steel had to be issued with three separate notices to compel them to hand over information to Inspectors in the last year. The report noted that a “review of documentation provided showed pattern of periodical and regular breakdowns at the iron plants resulting in uncontrolled emissions to atmosphere”.

Successful prosecutions were concluded against York Timber and Middleburg based coal miner Golfview Mining. In both cases the directors were criminally charged. But a loophole allows companies to apply for authorisation after the fact as long as they pay a fine. “Over the past six years, the DEA and provincial environment departments have collected at least R62m from authorising illegal activities after discovery of these offences,” Fourie says.

Even worse, if the current mining/environment amendment bills are promulgated as proposed, the department of mineral resources will also be able to approve after-the-fact rectifications for non-compliant mines – not as a temporary amnesty, but forever.