'This
is war!'
Activists
prepare to take legal action
By Kim Boodram
Trinidad Express
Port
Spain
Petroleumworldtt.com
04 08 07
NO smelter-this is war!
That's the declaration of anti-smelter activists
as they prepare to take legal action to prevent
the construction of an aluminium smelter in La
Brea.
At a media conference yesterday at the anti-smelter
camp at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine,
activists declared war on the Government, Alutrint-who
will be building the smelter-and the Environmental
Management Authority (EMA).
The smelter is to be built at Union Industrial
Estate, by the Chinese, using Chinese technology.
"We have been betrayed by the EMA," Norris
Deonarine of the National Foodcrop Farmers Association
(NFFA) said, adding that the St Augustine anti-smelter
group will be taking legal action.
Deonarine was flanked by UWI Senior Lecturer and
Physicist, Dr Peter Vine, Richie Richardson of
the Guave Road Farmers Association (Chaguaramas)
and Deputy Political Leader of the Congress of
the People (CoP), Wendy Lee Yuen, at the press
conference.
"We will be taking legal action very soon.
This will be based on lack of consultation with
the people and the fact that the EMA granted a
CEC (Certificate of Environmental Clearance) without
any real-time data," Deonarine said.
Dr Vine emphasised that the pollution modules
used by the EMA were not based on reality but were
fictional calculations.
The activists pointed out that at last year's
symposium on the construction of aluminium smelters,
hosted by the South Chamber of Industry and Commerce
at Paria Suites in Claxton Bay, it was concluded
that smelters were not economically appropriate
for this country.
At the symposium, independent consultant, Colin
Pratt, had said that smelters were taken on by
poor countries that had no other way of monetising
their oil and gas. He also stated that Trinidad
and Tobago did not need a smelter and should not
go that way of industrialisation.
"It is amazing that the Government would
go ahead with this smelter, considering these facts
and criticisms," Vine said. "Why? What
is there is that aluminium factory that is so important
to them?"
Vine also pointed out that real time health data-records
of the health of employees of existing smelters
in China-have still not been made available.
Richardson added that, coincidentally, the CEC
for the smelter has been granted at the same time
that Guave Road farmers are being bullied by the
Housing Development Corporation (HDC) to evacuate
the area to make way for a housing development
in Tucker Valley-a national park reserve.
Trinidad
Express
Wednesday, April 4th 2007
Copyright
©2007 Trinidad Express. All Rights Reserved.
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