Smelter battles being fought around the world

By Camille Bethel South Bureau
Wednesday, June 24th 2009
http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/article_business_mag?id=161495762

Anti-smelter activists and La Brea residents celebrate as the smelter plant was ruled unlawful on Tuesday. -Photo: JERMAINE CRUICKSHANK

The battle has been won, for now at least. The court has stopped the aluminium smelter. But the war will likely be lost- if the fight ends the way it did in other countries.

In Australia and Iceland, First World countries- developed and environmentally conscious- the mega industries won over the concerns of their citizens.

So the recent legal and environmental face off against Government's proposed construction of the smelter plant to produce aluminium at La Brea, is nothing new. Neither are the concerns- health, jobs, carbon emissions, greenhouse gases, toxic waste and habitat loss. In the end, progress overcame protest. Over the past ten years, proposals have been made for the construction of at least seven aluminium smelters in six countries around the world and in almost all of these countries there have been protest action in the wake of the construction of the plants, and even during the smelters' operations. Industry has waged battles against environmentalists but the plants were most times given clearance to be built. Victories for anti-smelter activists have been few- they were able to keep the smokestacks out of Vietnam and Brazil. The environmentalists persisted that other industries be pursued to ensure the health of the people. The smelting process, according to the experts, has been refined, the reduction of environmental impacts improved, to the point where the Alutrint aluminium operators felt confident enough to building a 125,000-tonne a year facility in a village that is home to more than 4,000 people. In 2008, Iceland which is 100,250 square kilometres in area, started its fourth aluminium smelter although it already had the world's highest production per capita of the population (260,000 tonnes and 300,000 people). The country was heading toward an increased production of over 1.5 million tonnes per year. This was met with protest action by an environmental group called Saving Iceland that say they are trying to protect Icelandic nature. And though many of them were arrested this did not deter their continued protests. Even Australia, the fifth largest producer of aluminium worldwide which holds seven per cent of the world's production of aluminium has had its fair share of protests which continue even now. Two weeks ago activists attempted to close down the country's second largest smelter in a series of widening protests. Protestors chained themselves together inside the facility in an attempt to block trucks from entering the compound. The people protesting were up in arms over the fact that industries like aluminium smelting will get 90 per cent of the country's pollution permits free from the federal government under the country's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. There are currently more than 200 smelters operating in 40 countries around the world, some of them from as early as the 1960s. Several of them now boast of being great income earners for both the countries and their people.