‘Convenient’ fire burns toxic waste stockpile
● A leading environmental activist believes the fire last Sunday at a chemical plant in KwaZulu-Natal is part of a smoke-and-mirrors campaign over a toxic stockpile of mercury waste that should have been disposed of years ago.
Earlier this month, environmental affairs minister Barbara Creecy visited the Metallica Chemicals plant in Cato Ridge, between Durban and Pietermaritzburg, where an estimated 3,000t of mercury waste has been stored for more than 20 years.
Creecy called the failure to dispose of the waste safely “scandalous” and said there were also concerns that mercury was being stolen, possibly for use in illegal mining.
Department spokesperson Albi Modise said several such incidents of theft had been reported at the Inchanga police station. “This matter has been elevated to various law enforcement agencies, including the Hawks,” he said.
A mysterious fire at the plant on Sunday destroyed about 30% of the waste stockpile, potentially causing toxic air pollution.
Metallica Chemicals is affiliated to British company Thor Chemicals, which was processing mercury in the UK until airborne pollution concerns forced it to stop in the 1970s.
It moved the operation to SA, where environmental laws were more lax, and imported mercury waste to be reclaimed.
Within its first year of operation in SA, excessive levels of mercury in the urine of workers were discovered and in the following years workers began to fall ill.
In 1997, a commission of inquiry into Thor, following the death of two workers at the plant, found the government to be culpable and complicit with Thor in importing the toxic waste.
The inquiry ruled that a clean-up plan be implemented and that Thor pay the costs. Thor has since disinvested from SA and Metallica has taken over the Cato Ridge facility.
Modise said that in 2013 the government tried but failed to find a local company with the expertise and equipment to safely dispose of the mercury waste.
“In 2016, the department again began to look at international waste processors that could safely dispose of the waste as there were no local companies with the requisite technologies to treat this waste safely,” he said.
“The department has been in discussion with an international company.”
Bobby Peek, director of the environmental justice NGO GroundWork, said it was “convenient” that warehouses storing the waste had burnt down days after the stockpile had again caught the government’s attention.
“Over 40t of the same mercury-laden legacy waste from Thor was also conveniently burnt and released into the environment in 2013 when the Thermopower [Furnaces] plant in Olifantsfontein burnt to the ground under suspicious circumstances,” Peek said.
Environmental law expert Richard Spoor, who conducted the department of labour inquiry into the mercury poisoning of workers at Thor in 1993, said the government had “dropped the ball” on the issue.
Spoor said Thor claimed at the time that traces of mercury in rivers near its plant were caused by people who stole its containers, washed them in the rivers, then used them for domestic purposes.
“That was Thor’s story in 1993-94. So it’s incredible that 25 years later they’re still complaining about people stealing the barrels of waste,” he said.
Metallica Chemicals said it would respond to questions from the Sunday Times next week.