Smelters Greatest Danger -The Spent Pot Lining Nightmare

The Spent Pot Lining Nightmare

 

Many persons will remember the great battles at  <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 />Chatham just over two years ago. The mighty citizens of this village on the South West Peninsula, spearheaded by the women, rose up and drove ALCOA, the Aluminum Company of America, from Trinidad. ALCOA wanted to destroy the Chatham forest, the seaside and the Chatham community. An aluminum smelter is enormously dangerous if proper control measures are not diligently applied.

 

Smelters produce aluminum fluoride, an invisible gas that wears away teeth, bone and impairs the lungs. It also produces huge amounts of carbon, which causes global warming. However, the greatest danger is posed by a mixture of chemical wastes called Spent Pot Lining.

 

Aluminum is made in huge metal pots, some as heavy as 36 tons. Big smelters contain long lines of these, each line bearing more than one hundred pots. A mixture of alumina, processed bauxite, and other substances are smelted to 900 degrees centigrade.

 

Over time, the brick lining in these pots begin to crumble. This spent lining needs to be replaced. This is why it is called Spent Pot Lining. This SPL contains cyanide, fluoride, arsenic and other toxic substances. One part out of 200,000 parts of cyanide could be fatal. SPL is so dangerous that in 1993, the United States Environmental Protection Agency banned its disposal in landfills. Even when very sophisticated plants were established to treat SPL, the treated material could still leach into the ground and cause grave danger to human health, underground water and the environment. The EPA gave this toxic waste from primary aluminum smelting a codename: K088.

 

One of the reasons why the Environmental Management Authority in Trinidad refused to give ALCOA a certificate to build an aluminum smelter in the Chatham Forest is that the SPL could have leached into the underground rocks and sand and contaminated the aquifer. An aquifer is a huge belt of sand, deep inside the earth, laden with water. The aquifer under Chatham stretched from Penal, to La Brea to Cedros. SPL could contaminate this source of pure water for thousands of years.

 

Unfortunately, the smelter story is not over. Five years ago the National Energy Corporation graded down 800 acres of pristine forest next to the sea at Union Village, La Brea. The NEC destroyed three dams which were used by the residents for fishing and recreation. They altered the course of the Vessigny River. Thousands of animals, which could not escape seawards, and had to flee inland, over roads and villages, were slaughtered. The honey and farming industries in the forest were destroyed. The NEC was mandated by the authorities to build an industrial estate to facilitate heavy industries. One of these was the Alutrint Smelter, owned 60% by the Government and 40% by a Venezuelan firm called SURAL.

 

This smelter would be uneconomic. Huge sums of money have already been spent, and more will be spent: land clearance, well capping, laying gaslines, a power plant, cheap terms on gas, death and injury to workers, relocation, the Chinese loan for the smelter, the cost of port and other infrastructural facilities. We will be giving up our marine resources, forest, gas, health, electricity, community well-being for a few jobs and a declining US dollars. The eventual cost per job will be exorbitant. The smelter capacity, 125,000 tons of aluminum per year, will be too small to make profits; it simply cannot compete on the international market on this small scale. It is a bust deal from the start.

 

However, the greatest problem is that Alutrint has not yet found a safe way to dispose of its SPL. It told the EMA that it would ship it to the USA at an Arkansas plant owned by ALCOA, called Reynolds Metals. However, this K088 disposal plant has not signed any contract with Alutrint. It has sent Alutrint a letter of intent to receive K088. But there is no firm contract. Nor do we know if international conventions, such as the Basel Convention, will permit the shipment of waste from Trinidad to the US. Nor do we know if the Arkansas Department of Pollution Control and Ecology, or the State itself, or the Federal Government, of the US EPA will grant permission to allow waste to enter or pass through their territories.

 

The cost of shipment of this waste would be immense. It would have to be shipped after the first five years of proposed start-up operations, and at intervals subsequent to that for thirty to fifty years. What a burden for Alutrint to carry, and for Trinidad and Tobago to bear. Safe collection, storage, and transport of SPL, for a company which is new, has never worked in aluminum or heavy industry before, is going to be a mammoth task.

 

The EMA has granted a certificate to Alutrint to build its smelter on condition that is can safely treat and transport its SPL to a foreign location. But what if Alutrint cannot find a treatment plant outside of Trinidad and Tobago? Will the entire 500 million dollar plant be dismounted? Will the Government, the NEC and Alutrint pressure the EMA to allow it to establish a landfill site here?

 

That is why we say No Smelter. Smelter is economic, dangerous to life, to the ecological system, and a great cross for the nation to bear. Already Alutrint has sought permission for an amalgamated waste facility in the South West Peninsula to deal with SPL; they have approached the Trinidad Cement Limited to use their kiln to treat it; they have sought Alcoa’s help at Arkansas. They still have not come up with a firm SPL disposal plan.

 

The smelter story and its SPL puzzle is the story of converting good to evil. It is the story of taking bountiful resources, seas, forests, dams, gardens of honey and milk, to convert to wasteland. It takes wealth and bounty and converts it to death and destruction.