Chatham residents win smelter war
BY COREY CONNELLY
Government has decided to immediately discontinue all plans to establish an Alcoa aluminium smelter on the Cap-de-Ville estate, Prime Minister Patrick Manning signalled yesterday.
“Instead, we shall accelerate development of a new industrial estate offshore at Otaheite Bank from which aluminium production can now be pursued together with other industrial plants,” Manning said in a televised Christmas Day address to the nation.
The PM said the Government would also continue with the Alutrint plant at La Brea, which, he indicated, could form the basis for further aluminium production facilities in T&T.
In a ten-page address, Manning declared that the proposed aluminium smelters, earmarked for the south-western peninsula, presented “no manageable threat” to either the environment or to the health of the population.
Government has come under fire from residents of south Trinidad and environmental activists who have asked that authorities reconsider the move which, they said, could pose serious health and environmental risks.
The controversial issue, which has elicited the views of prominent members of civil-society organisations, was the main topic at a special symposium at Paria Suites, La Romaine, recently.
Referring to the symposium, which he described as “quite successful,” Manning said:
“It is an accepted fact that all industrialisation must be managed. Our symposium produced the very salient conclusion that the two proposed aluminium smelters present no unmanageable threat either to the environment or to the health of the population.”
He noted that the Environmental Management Authority (EMA) was entrusted with the responsibility to set standards for all industrial activity “to which we ensure strict adherence.”
The PM said the symposium concluded that on health and environmental grounds “there was no bar to the establishment of an aluminium industry in Trinidad and Tobago and that such risks as may exist are quite manageable.”
He added: “The Government is now able to arrive at conclusions based on the symposium.”
Manning reiterated that the EMA had set the strictest standards for the pursuit of aluminium smelting facilities in the country “and the Government will ensure that all standards of health and environmental safety are met.”
The PM said the coming of an aluminium smelter was of great importance in the new industrialisation of T&T.
“Like plastics, aluminium is also used in a great variety of manufacturing activity,” he said.
“This year, we have made good progress towards this goal.”
Commenting on the PM’s announcement, anti-smelter activist Wayne Kublalsingh said:
“What Alcoa has done is that they have moved the king on the chest board one move to the left and, unfortunately, that king is Patrick Manning.”
Kublalsingh, a lecturer in the liberal arts department of the University of the West Indies, claimed that, if anything, the move showed clearly how indebted the PM was to the foreign corporation.
“The people of Chatham and T&T have been crying out to him to stop the smelter and he did not stop it from Chatham because of what the people were saying, but because they found there was too much water on the Chatham/Cap-de-Ville site,” he added.
Kublalsingh said the new plan reaffirmed the suspicion that Manning “is willing to be used as a giant pawn by Alcoa while refusing to listen to the people.”
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