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| MORE SMELTERS PLANNED - BUT NO WATER OR POWER? |
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| Written by INGELA RICHARDSON |
| Monday, 24 May 2010 13:08 |
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According to a report in the Daily Dispatch (Tuesday October 23), industries including Boeing, Airbus and Thyssen Krupp want to develop titanium metal and pigment industries in the Eastern Cape with rutile ore from the beach sand of Kwa-Zulu Natal and the Eastern Cape. Of course, aside from the fact that smelters require vast quantities of fresh water in their production process and aside from the other inconvenient truth that each smelter requires as much energy as a city, the ore these industries want is in ecologically sensitive areas along the pristine Wild Coast. Australian company Mineral Commodities (MRC) is doing an environmental impact assessment (EIA) to get permission to mine 22 km of the Wild Coast, with findings due today. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, an aluminium smelter that BHP Billiton wants to build will require 2000 MW of electricity which it plans to take from the hydro-electric power station nearby. Obviously this huge usage of electricity negatively compromises other businesses and agriculture in the area. It is not yet clear where Rio Tinto, the multi-national that has so recently taken over from Alcan, plans to source enough energy to power their double-sized smelter to be constructed at Coega outside Port Elizabeth. But according to a report from I-Net Bridge, the sub-Saharan African energy crisis has worsened. The report stated that "despite increased demands for energy, the percentage of sub-Saharan Africans with access to electricity remains low". It is ironic that the majority of poorer people in South Africa who do not have access to electricity at all, or who cannot afford this basic resource, will be further compromised by the construction of smelters that drain energy sources, raise electricity prices for the consumer by making it a rarer commodity and poison earth, air and water with their pollutant emissions. It also makes no sense to warn the average person to take heed of the global warming crisis and amend his/her individual lifestyle in small ways, when massive industrial smelters planned for Africa will leave a huge ecological footprint and add to the global warming problem on a vast scale. Perhaps Africa is being targeted for these smelters because other nations are trying to shrug off their industrial burdens and assume greener habits? Countries in Africa have already suffered toxic dumping as heavily industrialized nations attempted to use the continent as a large rubbish bin. It is hoped that the South African government will not allow foreign multi-nationals to construct smelters here that will waste electricity resources, pollute, cause illness - especially to impoverished nearby communities - and add to the global warming threat. Yours sincerely INGELA RICHARDSON |
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