Durban - Enviroserv is determined to gag a UK man, claiming it lost two long-time customers as a result of his online “smear campaign” against its controversial Shongweni landfill site.
But Jeremy Everitt, a South African who lives in the UK, is adamant that his comments relating to the “environmental crisis” are true and believes it is his constitutional right and “duty” as a concerned citizen, and as someone with friends, family and property in the affected area, to speak out in protest. Everitt owns a property in the Plantations Estate in Hillcrest.
This emerged in an urgent application brought in the Durban High Court yesterday.
In her founding affidavit, EnviroServ’s group technical director, Esme Gombault, said Everitt had been forwarding information from the Upper Highway Air non-profit organisation’s social media pages to “literally hundreds of recipients”.
“Particularly damaging is that Everitt dispatches the material so obtained to EnviroServ’s international investors, shareholders, customers, the media and any other third parties whom he believes may be interested in the matter,” Gombault said.
She said the material he was distributing had become “outdated and redundant”.
“EnviroServ has actually lost two of its long-time customers and continues to receive queries from others,” she said
The communities of Hillcrest, Shongweni, Dassenhoek and surrounds are up in arms about the landfill and say the fumes it emits have resulted in a variety of health problems.
Last month, the Department of Environmental Affairs issued EnviroServ with a notice of intention to suspend or revoke its licence for the landfill.
It was reported this week that provincial director of public prosecutions, advocate Moipone Noko, has decided that the company should be prosecuted on criminal charges.
Read also: EnviroServ to appear over Shongweni landfill
This comes after the Department of Environmental Affairs opened a case of contravening the National Air Quality Act at KwaNdengezi Police Station last September.
Gombault said in the application that the company had since August spent around R15million on
“extensive remedial action” to address the odour problems at the landfill.
“There is no doubt that the remedial measures are having the intended positive effect,” she said.
She said despite this, Everitt had continued with his “smear campaign”. Everitt, she said, was unaware of the developments EnviroServ had made because he lived in the UK.
EnviroServ had served Everitt with court papers pertaining to a main application last year.
But the matter would only be ready to be heard in several months’ time, Gombault said.
In the interim, the company had brought the urgent court action and wanted Everitt interdicted from distributing “malicious, false or defamatory” information about
it.
Gombault said if he continued to perpetuate his “defamatory and unlawful campaign” against EnviroServ, the company’s financial position and reputation could become “irrecoverable”.
In his answering affidavit, Everitt said his comments were “statement of fact made in the public interest”.
“And where I have expressed my opinions they are on the basis of facts I reasonably believe to be true,” he said.
Everitt placed the blame for the company’s “failing reputation” squarely on its own shoulders.
He also said EnviroServ’s “extensive remedial actions” had been “wholly insufficient” and that neither he nor the community were impressed by the company’s claims that it had spent money on these actions.
“It is clear and obvious, from the persistent, noxious smells coming from the dump, daily, that these efforts are inadequate,” Everitt said.
Legitimate
He said that despite living in the UK, he was aware of the daily logging of complaints by the
community living in the area surrounding the Shongweni landfill and that EnviroServ’s international investors, shareholders, customers and the media had a legitimate interest in knowing that the company was “causing damage to the environment and harm to the community”.
In an explanatory and confirmatory affidavit filed in support of Everitt’s affidavit, Dr Karla Lott, a medical doctor living in the affected area, said her two children had suffered health issues as a result of the inhalation of landfill gas.
“Within 15 minutes of the odour events starting, my child (now 16 months) is crying and often has vomiting spells,” she said.
“There are no infective causes for this vomiting and she is not nauseous or vomiting the following day”.
Lott herself had suffered health problems due to the odours and had to “give up full-time practice”.
“We have also recently sold our house. I can no longer live on no-sleep, nor can I expect my children to endure the persistent vomiting, respiratory distress and nosebleeds associated with the odours,” Lott said.
The matter was adjourned until later this month.