Rather than dealing with its dirty air, ArcelorMittal is playing with hot air, local and global environmental groups say.
The groups, which call themselves Global Action, say the global steel producer has gone on the "meeting offensive" in South Africa instead of releasing its environmental master plan on air pollution.
Residents in the Vaal Triangle, where one of the company's operations is located, have accused it of polluting local air and groundwater, and causing respiratory illnesses.
In 2001, 16 landowners asked that Iscor, ArcelorMittal's predecessor in South Africa, be ordered to stop pollution by its manufacturing processes. They alleged that they suffered kidney problems and poisoned crops.
Global Action says that, during the past 15 years, ArcelorMittal's predecessor, Mittal Steel, bought up several old and highly polluting steel mills in various parts of the world and made them profitable.
However, environmental improvements other than those necessary to increase production efficiency have been painfully slow.
In several countries, the company has received low-interest loans from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the International Finance Corporation for environmental improvements but the results have been largely invisible to local people, the group says.
The report: "Going nowhere slowly", says that ArcelorMittal's corporate public relations has been the big issue in South Africa over the last year, as it has sought to convince the community that the "leopard has changed its spots".
Global Action says the position of the conglomerate about releasing information has become more entrenched, with the firm agreeing to a process of talking about information rather than releasing it. At the same time ArcelorMittal has been one of the main industrial forces in the country, vetoing stronger regulations on air pollution.
Among the contributors to the report is Bobby Peek, a director of groundWork, an environmental pressure group in South Africa.
"Going nowhere slowly" says ArcelorMittal's response to challenges put to it last year was to call meetings with community representatives. This is a common corporate strategy to be able to diffuse and to manage community resistance, it says.
The result of the meeting in July last year between community representatives from various organisations, including the Vaal Environmental Justice Alliance, groundWork and an entourage of senior management at ArcelorMittal was that ArcelorMittal attempted to focus more on how to release its environmental master plan than when it would release it, says the report.
The master plan is a 9 000 page document that was compiled by consultants in 2002.
Global Action says that on September 1, community representatives were once again called to a meeting with Remi Boyer, ArcelorMittal's president for corporate social responsibility, where again it was reiterated that the steel producer release the master plan unconditionally, but nothing came out of it.
The report says: "Arcelor-Mittal went on with its push to "engage" on issues of corporate social responsibility.
"Corporate social responsibility has often been used to evade the hard questions asked by community people for improved corporate practice. In impoverished communities, coupled with weak government agencies, corporate social responsibility often detracts from improved governance and criticism by communities of poor industrial practice. It becomes difficult at the local level when corporate social responsibility represents an image of some work being done in a vacuum of governance. With corporate social investment, corporate social responsibility becomes a dangerous tool for quietening critical voices."
Global Action says ArcelorMittal's corporate social responsibility push has been coupled with a parallel approach with government and non-government organisation (NGO) representatives on air quality emission standards, where it is seeking to delay the meaningful and timely implementation standards for the steel industry.
The report says the steel industry, as well as the petrochemical and cement industry, in South Africa has operated with impunity since its establishment as far back as the 1930s.
"In September this year, the new Air Quality Act of 2004 will come into force with emission standards for industry, and these emission standards are what ArcelorMittal is seeking to weaken and to further extend its time to comply.
While the community and NGOs are saying that standards governing old plants need to be attained in three years, ArcelorMittal is pushing for eight years. It is clear that its corporate social responsibility push is to lobby for weaker governance and standards."
Sven Lunsche, ArcelorMittal's spokesman, said the company was either implementing or working on remedial plans to comprehensively address all its environmental problem areas, as it was aware of the adverse impact its operations could and have had on the environment.
"But we need to point out that in the wake of the worst economic crisis in over 70 years, funding all our capital projects at the rate initially envisaged will prove impossible. In 2008, we had a four-year plan of about $600 million (R5 billion) for our environmental projects, but this has now been postponed and only the most urgent projects are being funded," Lunsche said.
On why ArcelorMittal had not released the master plan, Lunsche said it was an accepted practice that detailed results of an audit of any kind were a confidential matter to a company, and this document had to be viewed in the same light.