Although their relationship with ArcelorMittal South Africa had become less acrimonious, environmental groups said yesterday that they were planning legal action to force the steel producer to publish a secret eight-year-old environmental “masterplan”.
The issue has strained stakeholder relations after the masterplan was compiled by consultants in 2002 but never made public. ArcelorMittal SA said yesterday that it would not release the 9000-page report.
The company published year-end results yesterday and announced plans to spend R3 billion up to 2015 on environmental rehabilitation, legacy water-pollution and clean energy projects.
Environmental spend amounted to R300 million in the year under review.
The company said its commitment to “making our operations sustainable has not wavered, despite the economic downturn”. By comparison, it said in 2009 that only the most urgent of its environmental projects would proceed.
The Vaal Environmental Justice Alliance said yesterday in Vanderbijlpark that their relationship was “no longer acrimonious”, but legal action was nonetheless being pursued.
Vanderbijlpark is home to ArcelorMittal SA’s headquarters and primary production site, which has attracted the attention of the Green Scorpions as it falls within the Vaal Triangle priority air-shed area.
Chairman Phineas Malapela said environmental NGOs and Department of Water Affairs officials were part of a monitoring committee to keep watch on issues such as the proximity to water sources of toxic sludge leached from an unlined waste site.
The firm said it no longer had unlined ponds at Vanderbijlpark after a new site was commissioned in December.
Malapela believed the change in ArcelorMittal SA’s attitude to have come about on the instruction of parent company ArcelorMittal, which owns 52 percent of its JSE-listed subsidiary. Global environmental groups have sustained an international campaign to highlight transgressions at ArcelorMittal operations worldwide.
Bobby Peek, director of NGO groundWork, said yesterday that although the relationship with ArcelorMittal SA was not acrimonious, “it’s not of any value in the monitoring committee. You can’t have a relationship of value to monitor old toxic landfill sites that is based on information you don’t have.”
He accused ArcelorMittal SA of using the committee to tick boxes. “It’s partly up to us (organisations) to unpack that, which is why we’re taking the legal process,” he said.
An alliance of environmental organisations was investigating the possibility of securing access to the masterplan via the Promotion of Access to Information Act, he said.
According to Malapela, ArcelorMittal SA had said that it was advised by its lawyers not to release the document.
Previously ArcelorMittal SA argued it would not make the document public because it was accepted practice that audits were confidential and the bulk of the work undertaken in the masterplan was outdated.
The company said yesterday that its efforts to improve environmental performance relied heavily on the experience of and research and development within its parent company.
It would benchmark plants against best-practice plants in Europe, North America and South America, and had approved detailed action plans with targets for improved efficiency and reduced energy usage. - Business Report