SAPREF response to protest by the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance

September 3, 2002

SAPREF welcomes any input from the community regarding our operations and we are committed to working with SDCEA and other community organisations to improve conditions in south Durban.

We are happy to receive SDCEA's memorandum and will respond accordingly once we have studied it. We have, in turn, written a letter to SDCEA reiterating our previous invitations to work with them. A copy of the letter is attached.

The following is SAPREF's response to the issues raised by SDCEA in a leaflet distributed last week.

Incidents
It is an exaggeration to say that SAPREF has experienced over 20 major incidents since 1998. We have never denied responsibility for any incidents that we have been involved in. We regret any such incidents, however, we have learned from these experiences and are committed to continually improving our performance.

Emissions
SAPREF has engaged in a number of environmental initiatives to reduce a wide range of emissions such as sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, particulates and volatile organic compounds. More than R450 million has been investment in environmental improvements since 1993. In addition to this, SAPREF is accredited to the International Environmental Standard ISO 14000 and this commits us to a process of ongoing improvement.

Next month we will commission a new R350 million sulphur recovery plant which will almost halve our sulphur dioxide (SO2) emissions, reducing them to 20 tons a day from next year.

SAPREF is fully supportive of health studies to be undertaken in south Durban as part of environmental affairs and tourism minister Valli Moosa's multi-point plan. These studies should tell us the sources of air pollution in the area as well as the health impact of the pollution. To date no link has been made conclusively between emissions and health in south Durban.

Pipelines
SAPREF is cooperating fully in a joint study to determine how the pipelines should be managed in the future, including agreement on a replacement and repair philosophy. The parties to this study are the eThekwini Health Department, SDCEA, ourselves, Engen and an independent consultant. We will abide the outcome of the peer review.

Emergency plans
We have frequently indicated our willingness to work with the city authorities to develop an emergency plan for south Durban. Our previous attempt had to be shelved after SDCEA was unable to reach agreement with authorities on pre-conditions. German funding which had been made available for the project was unfortunately withdrawn.

Worker safety
Worker safety is taken very seriously at SAPREF. We recently achieved a safety milestone of three million hours without a lost time injury.

For more information, please email Margaret Rowe, SAPREF's communications manager, at Margaret.Rowe@sapref.com.

 

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