July 22, 2008 Edition 1


Tony Carnie


PLANS are afoot for a massive expansion of the petrol and chemical storage facilities in Durban Harbour, close to the Bluff residential areas of Fynnlands and Marlborough Park.

Vopak, the world's largest private tank storage operator, announced plans yesterday to demolish several of its older storage tanks in the Island View/Cutler Complex national key point and to replace them with about three dozen storage tanks with capacity for at least 140 million litres of petroleum and chemical products.


The Cutler Complex dates back to the early 1930s. In September last year a massive fire at the Island View Storage chemical complex lit up the night sky after an explosion, which was visible as far away as Umhlanga.


As part of a mandatory environmental impact assessment process, Vopak is inviting people to comment on the proposal and register their concerns.


The South Durban Community Environmental Alliance said yesterday that it was worried about the risk of explosions, and the health implications for people living next to the complex, and was reluctant to participate in the assessment process unless Vopak was transparent about the full risk implications.


Alliance chairman Desmond D'Sa said residents had been demanding, since 1997, that the city develop an emergency evacuation plan for the area, and there was an urgent need to reduce the volume of hazardous products stored close to residential areas.


Vopak, however, said there was a shortage of land in the south Durban area to develop new storage facilities and it was therefore necessary to consolidate and redevelop existing facilities in the harbour.


According to a background information document prepared on Vopak's behalf by consulting firm Golder Associates, the consolidation and expansion project at Island View was due to increasing national demand for petroleum and chemical storage facilities. Earlier this year, Transnet announced plans to almost double the volume of petroleum fuels supplied to Gauteng by building a 525km fuel pipeline from Durban to Heid elberg.


As part of its investigation, Transnet said it would need to build a new tanker storage terminal in Durban - either at Island View or at the existing Durban International Airport site.


However, according to Golder Associates spokesman Warren Hale, the new Vopak expansion project was not related to the Transnet Gauteng pipeline or its Durban storage facility project.


Golder Associates said the environmental study would include a risk assessment of a major disaster and the potential hazards to the health of people living next to the facility.


If the project was approved by the provincial agriculture and environment affairs department, the expansion would take place in phases from January next year to March 2011.


Meanwhile, D'sa questioned the wisdom of Transnet's decision to build a massive new fuel pipeline to Gauteng without any apparent effort to improve public transport networks in the country's industrial heartland.


He said the Transnet plan reflected a "business as usual" approach to fossil-fuel burning and showed little regard for the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under the Kyoto Protocol and Copenhagen climate change negotiations.