CT port extension gets red light

RAY SMUTS
ENVIRONMENTAL affairs minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk has broken months of silence by reversing his department’s approval of the environmental impact assessment on the projected multi-million rand extension of the Cape Town Container Terminal. In so doing, he partly upheld most of the public appeals against the project while at the same time instructing the National Ports Authority to undertake further studies on the impact of the terminal on the marine ecology and on coastal processes, in addition to investigating other “inland solutions”, and to report back within two months. Van Schalkwyk asserted that if the project were to go ahead in its present form it would amount to an “unmitigated national disaster”. The minister criticised the Council for Scientific and industrial Research (commissioned by the NPA to conduct the necessary research) for certain non-disclosures which left the environmental impact assessment seriously flawed and reflected “a serious breach of responsibility” on the part of the organisation. NPA CEO, Kgomotso Philele, pointed out that the delay had dragged on for about two years and expansion was critical.