R90 000 fine for Hout Bay billionaires
A R90 000 FINE imposed by the province on a billionaire Italian family for unlawfully manipulating a mountain stream flowing through the property of their Hout Bay mansion, has infuriated some local residents.
The affected property is now in the estate of the late Pietro Ferrero, the chief executive of the Ferrero Group that produces among other products Ferrero Rocher and Kinder chocolates and Nutella. He died after falling from his bicycle while on a training ride on Victoria Road between Llandudno and Camps Bay in April 2011.
The company’s press office at headquarters in Alba in Italy, said later the 47-year-old had been in SA on a business trip with his father at the time, and that the sweet-manufacturing business had helped make the Ferreros Italy’s richest family.
The Residents’ Association of Hout Bay has described the fine as “a gentle slap on the wrist” for what it terms “unlawful activities undertaken wilfully and solely for the selfish benefit of the owner”.
It believes the provincial Department of Environmental Affairs and Development Planning is set to approve a rectification programme requiring only minor remedial meas- ures that will still leave a “residual impact of medium to high negative significance”.
But the province will not process the rectification application until the fine has been paid, and the fine is still the subject of an appeal process. The association has already formally objected.
Ferrero’s two-erven property, collectively named Flight Deck, is in Suzanne Avenue, the highest road on the south-eastern slopes of Hout Bay.
The rectification application acknowledges unlawful construction of a large berm (an earth wall), smaller berm, small pond, piping of a water course – a stream tributary of the Baviaanskloof River – and a building platform. Work on some of these structures started as early as 2003, and work on the pond in mid-2009.
Legally, one may not interfere with the free flow of a stream or river, and an environmental impact assessment (EIA) process should have been done.
The application was submitted to the province in December 2010. It replied in late September 2011, triggering a public participation process.
During that process, both CapeNature and the residents’ association argued that the unauthorised activities had resulted in “negative impacts of high significance at a local level”.
“These impacts are largely irreversible and it is unlikely that CapeNature would have supported the activities were these assessed prior to the implementation.” CapeNature warned that retrospective mitigation measures were usually costly and were rarely completed successfully.
But the property owner’s environmental consultant replied: “Many of the negative impacts were already present before the construction of the berm.”
The consultant also pointed out that, according to specialist report by freshwater ecologist Dr Liz Day who had “exhaustively” assessed the freshwater ecological impacts, none of the unlawful activities should have caused a reduction in the downstream flow as the Ferrero property was neither abstracting water nor detaining water flows.
However, Day also reported that the cumulative impacts of the unlawful activities had “high negative significance”.
The consultant argued that because Pietro Ferrero had not been responsible for the environmental degradation in the watercourse and surrounds, his estate could not be expected to pay for the complete rehabilitation – “Rectification needs to be reasonable.”
Residents’ association chairman Len Swimmer said the affected stream had been reduced to a trickle this winter, despite the heavy rain, and argued it was because of work at the Ferrero property.
“Our appeal spells it out very clearly: we hope for full rectification in terms of the environmental laws, rather than a gentle slap on the wrist by way of a R90 000 fine. Even a R9 million fine would not suffice – the environment should not suffer at the hands of individuals to the detriment of the public at large.
“It’s a fundamental right in the constitution that the environment is for all the citizens to enjoy, and rivers and streams cannot be hijacked by individuals for their own selfish needs,” he said.