Wasting the Nation.indd - Groundwork

Chapter 3: The politics of wasteBox 7: No closure at AloesThe Aloes hazardous landfill was built in the late 1970s in the neighbourhood ofthe large black township of Motherwell but virtually on top of the informal but wellestablished settlement of the Vermaak community. An incinerator was added in theearly 1990s. The Vermaak community was then caught between the incinerator anddump. In 1998, residents told EJNF journalist Mpume Nyandu that these facilitieswere imposed on them without consultation and that they changed their lives. Thecommunity was always poor but they became sick as well. Many people died “as aresult of this pollution” while others became too ill to work. The community wasthen further impoverished. In 1995, they formed the Aloes Environment Committeeand, in 1998, government agreed to their demand for resettlement away from thedump. Actual resettlement, however, was delayed till 2002 and issues relating tohealth and compensation were never addressed.The original Aloes dump was unlined and leached toxics down through thegroundwater and into the Swartkops estuary below. It was closed in 1998 whenAloes 2, engineered to the H:H standards, was constructed alongside. The olddump was and is an environmental disaster. The new dump soon ran into troublesof its own. The municipality quite rightly refused to accept untreated leachate atits sewage works while Waste-tech, and subsequently EnviroServ, was reluctant toinvest the capital to treat the leachate. For three years from 2000, the site was closedas the growing lake of leachate occupied the space available for new waste. TheDWAF nevertheless kept extending the operating permit and EnviroServ eventuallyinvested in a leachate treatment plant. Aloes continues to operate as one of its threeH:H landfills.Summers commented in 1991 that “the economic logic behind dumping a load oftoxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable …”. Jim Puckett of the BaselAction Network (BAN) responded that “his words were shocking” because “withrespect to traditional free market economics, they were true”. The waste would arriveat the cheapest destination. 26Basel was itself intended to defend the trade in toxic wastes. Following a series ofscandals over toxic dumping in poor countries, African countries moved to ban waste26 Jim Puckett, South Africa must lead in preserving Basel ban, EJNF Newsletter, No.15, Spring 1997.- 46 - groundWork - Wasting the Nation