Limberg adds that the City has mitigation and monitoring measures in place, and it is confident its environmental approach is adequate.“ The City has a significant amount of research that has been done over the past 10 years or so, giving us a great understanding of the aquifers and where they exist and what risks there are when these sources are tapped into. And obviously, we believe that we are drilling in a very sensitive way by sticking to the yields that the Department of Water and Sanitation has approved but also complying [ with ] the environmental authorisations that have been granted from the Department of Environmental Affairs. And obviously, the environmental control officers also have to report accordingly, and everything is documented in respect to the entire drilling exercise. And we believe all of these things combined, as well as the City’ s focus on replenishing these aquifers, will also ensure that we safeguard these water sources,” she says.
City compromising‘ critical ecological infrastructure’
But Associate Professor Adam West from the University of Cape Town’ s Biological Sciences department says owing to the particular vulnerability of the region’ s localised, threatened species, past studies do not negate the need for a thorough EIA. West is part of a group of experts who drafted a letter of concern addressed to City officials. In the statement, the group of prominent scientists warns that the City will“ compromise critical ecological infrastructure upon which the health of the region and its people rely and potentially contravene several international commitments to which South Africa is a signatory”. To underscore just how vulnerable some of the plants in the region are, the letter points to a critically endangered species of protea, Mimetes stokoei,“ whose entire world population would fit into a tennis court”. Therefore, even an operation with a relatively small footprint could still devastate a particularly vulnerable population. According to the scientists, a quick scoping exercise looking at the potential impact of the drill sites on threatened ecosystems and plant species found that nearly all( 214 of the 222) drill points for which there is spatial information occur within threatened ecosystems, which would normally trigger several stringent requirements for a thorough EIA. The letter goes further to state that:“ The drill sites also intersect with 5 652 known populations of species of conservation concern, representing 266 separate species … These are staggeringly high numbers for any development.”
Risks not merited
It recommends that similar scoping exercises should be done for fish, amphibians, and freshwater invertebrates. While the immediate impacts of infrastructure such as cables, pipes, and vehicle access are a primary problem for ecologists, the secondary concern is how the falling water table may affect rare plants growing in marshy soil fed by groundwater. In the document, the group points to the devastating impacts groundwater abstraction has had on ecosystems elsewhere in the world.
According to the scientists, a quick scoping exercise looking at the potential impact of the drill sites on threatened ecosystems and plant species found that nearly all( 214 of the 222) drill points for which there is spatial information occur within threatened ecosystems, which would normally trigger several stringent requirements for a thorough EIA. networking contributor innovations industry debate environment infrastructure municipalities
Water Sewage & Effluent March / April 2018 29