Opinion
- Editorial
Julian Kenny:
The powers of advertising
The
email message was one of despair. "We have
lost" she said and added, "we are not
too important in the scheme of things". Yet
she felt it she had to write to me - to thank me
for helping her through my several columns on the
subject of smelters and environmental law. I have
met many citizens from the Chatham area over the
years and more recently with the younger generation
and after a dozen or so commentaries I thought that
there was not much more to say. But her message
and the continuing Alcoa PR blitz demand of me further
comment.
One
item in the blitz was headlined Alcoa moving toward
zero waste. Zero waste? Really! The advertisement
is typical of the advertising craft - crafty and
deceptive. It states that "a key feature of
Alcoa's strategy for sustainable development is
minimising our wastes".
There
is no doubt that Alcoa has been doing everything
possible to reduce its wastes, but this was inevitable
in the light of the stringent standards of US environmental
law. But in fact its Texas operations have been
grandfathered by law and continue to pollute using
brown coal for electricity generation. But what
does the company accept as sustainable development?
The Brundtland one or the Trinidad and Tobago one.
The former defines it as one in which future generations
are not compromised in meeting their needs. Natural
gas is a finite non-renewable asset. The life of
the proposed smelter is that of merely one generation.
What happens after that? Forty years ago when the
North Sea gas came in the United Kingdom it was
the energy of the future. Today that country imports
natural gas from Russia!
But
zero wastes? This is quite impossible. The process
of producing aluminium involves both the refining
of bauxite to extract alumina, an oxide of aluminium,
as well as the reduction of the alumina to aluminium
by electrolysis in a flux of sodium aluminium fluoride.
The former produces vast quantities of a sterile
and caustic red mud. The alumina being smeltered
in Trinidad will have generated hundreds of thousands
of tonnes of red mud elsewhere. The latter produces
a range of wastes including perfluorcarbons (PFCs),
polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), sulphur dioxide.
In
addition the pots in which aluminium is smelted
have a limited life and have to be relined periodically.
Pot liners contain wastes such as PAHs, arsenic,
fluoride and cyanide. These are all toxic and these
are the wastes that Alcoa is aiming to minimise.
In
the United States all of these are classified as
hazardous wastes and indeed it currently costs millions
in remediation of polluted sites. Aluminium has
a great affinity for oxygen and on exposure to the
atmosphere it forms a thin layer of oxide that is
protective of the metal. It does not corrode easily
and this is what makes it so important commercially.
What
Alcoa has not told citizens is the tonnage of carbon
dioxide that will be released into the atmosphere.
In its proposed smelter at Cap de Ville it will
probably produce well over 500,000 tonnes of this
each year.
When
BC Pires interviewed an Alcoa executive and a government
minister both fumbled answers. You pass a massive
amperage of low voltage current (generated by burning
natural gas) through a mixture of aluminium oxide
and the flux of sodium aluminium fluoride reducing
the oxide to the primary metal and what do you get?
Vast quantities of carbon dioxide, and aluminium
metal. Any O-Level chemistry student using molecular
weights will be able to do the arithmetic and come
up with the answer.
What
will Alcoa do with the carbon dioxide? Trap it and
inject into the substrata? They talk about a 25
per cent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions without
naming the gas. And while at it - publicly advertise
denial that there was a long term bauxite contamination
problem affecting the health of residents at Carenage.
The
critical issue is not so much the release of fluorides
into the atmosphere but dealing with the spent pot
liners that are extremely hazardous. They cannot
be simply buried as the fluorides and other hazardous
substances may leak out and contaminate groundwater.
And
readers will note that Mr Overbey has openly stated
that it is not yet determined exactly what will
be done with them. If they are to be exported there
is the issue of the Basel Convention on trans-boundary
shipping of hazardous substances. We have signed
this convention, for which domestic legislation
is yet to be drafted.
We
do not have air, water, hazardous and toxic wastes
rules required by the EM Act, nor a proper toxic
waste facility. These have to be in place before
any CEC is granted. Any such CEC may be challenged.
No, Valerie, you are important in the scheme of
things. You are a citizen with rights enshrined
in the Constitution and the part of the country
in which you live has been designated by Parliament
for agriculture and forestry.
Julian
Kenny
is Professor of Zoology, at the St. Augustine Campus
of the University of the West Indies.
Petroleumworld not necessarily share these views.
Editor's
Note: This commentary was published by The Trinidad
Express, on Tuesday,
June 27th 2006,
Petroleumworld reprint this article in the interest
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Petroleumworld
07 02 06
Copyright
© 2006 Julian
Kenny/Trinidad
Express. All rights reserved
