Decades after the first drums of toxic sludge began to pile up in SA, the government has failed to get rid of more than 3 000 tons of mercury waste stored at the old Thor Chemicals factory in KwaZulu-Natal.
Thousands of barrels of mercury waste remain in warehouses and sludge ponds at Cato Ridge, outside Durban, while in the valley below, medical researchers have found high levels of mercury in people’s hair and in fish and soil samples around Inanda Dam.
Thor is a British-based multinational which imported thousands of tons of mercury waste into SA after it was forced to shut down hazardous operations in the UK in the early 1980s.
Four years ago, researchers at the SA Medical Research Council collected hair samples from 86 people in the vicinity of Inanda dam, along with fish and soil samples.
Nearly 20 percent of the human hair samples had mercury levels above World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines, half the fish samples were above WHO guidelines and 22 percent of soil samples were also problematic.
Mercury is a powerful neurotoxin which can lead to blurred vision, tremors, brain damage, coma and death.
While the government recommended an immediate ban on fishing at the dam, there is little evidence that it was ever enforced and, 18 months ago, medical researchers repeated their concerns about mercury pollution in the valley and called for “immediate attention and clean-up action”.
“It begs the question as to why action was not taken and who was responsible for such action,” researchers Professor Angela Mathee, Vathiswa Papu-Zamxaka and Trudy Harpham warned in the Journal of Environmental Management.
But the national Environmental Affairs Department could not explain the delay in cleaning up the Thor Chemicals stockpile.
Responding to questions from The Mercury, department spokesman Albi Modise said the final remediation plan had not been approved by the government, al- though the intention was to start cleaning up before September 2013.
Modise said the costs could exceed R100 million, but he did not spell out how this would be apportioned between the government and Guernica Chemicals (the new name of the Thor factory).
It emerged in court proceedings in the late 1990s that Thor’s parent company (Thor Chemicals Holdings) was in the middle of a demerger process in which almost £20 million was transferred to a new holding company.
Thor group chairman Des Cowley denied at the time that the demerger’s purpose was to shift assets to escape legal damages claims from sick workers in SA.
And while Guernica Chemicals is believed to have set aside about R110m for the Thor clean-up operation, it remains unclear whether this will be enough to meet the remediation costs. More recently, sources suggested that the Thor group and Guernica may have embarked on reorganisation of financial assets.
Cowley has not responded to queries on the issue, while Guernica director Neville Naicker said he preferred not to comment as he was due to meet government officials to discuss a number of issues.
Commenting on the reasons for the long delay, Bobby Peek of the environmental watchdog group groundWork said he suspected the cost might be a central factor.
“It would not surprise me if decisions are based on what is the best financial solution for the government and Thor Chemicals.”
Papu-Zamxaka, Harpham and Mathee expressed similar concern.
They note that while SA has fine legislation to prevent and clean up pollution, there is still a large gap between the law and what happens on the ground.
“This legislation is not being implemented, as the reality is that the drums of mercury waste are still stored at Thor Chemicals and were neither recycled nor disposed of in an environmentally sound manner.” - The Mercury