Pe­ter Bal­roop

The Al­coa Steamship Com­pa­ny, which has op­er­at­ed the baux­ite trans­fer sta­tion at Tem­blado­ra, Ch­aguara­mas Bay, for the past 51 years, is "down­siz­ing" op­er­a­tions in T&T. This was con­firmed by long-time sta­tion man­ag­er, Pe­ter Bell, and fol­lows the an­nounce­ment in ear­ly Au­gust from Al­coa's USA head­quar­ters, that the com­pa­ny had ac­quired BHP Bil­li­ton's baux­ite and alu­mi­na re­fin­ing in­ter­ests in Suri­name.

Asked to con­firm re­ports that Al­coa was mov­ing to shut down its op­er­a­tions in Trinidad, Bell said, "There will be some down­siz­ing. That is all I can say on the mat­ter right now." The trans­fer sta­tion has an all-lo­cal staff, and ru­mours of a cut­back in op­er­a­tions had trick­led out to the Care­nage Pro­tec­tion Com­mit­tee (CPC) which has a long-stand­ing law­suit against Al­coa in the lo­cal courts over dust pol­lu­tion.

The mat­ter was filed back in 1986 on the CPC's be­half by at­tor­ney Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, but is yet to be re­solved. Ma­haraj con­firmed that he did ac­cept a brief from CPC ac­tivist, Au­gustin Noel, to en­sure that the mat­ter was set­tled be­fore Al­coa closed shop in Trinidad. He is be­ing joined in the quest by en­vi­ron­men­tal at­tor­ney, Ma­ri­na Nar­i­nesingh, from the Trinci­ty law firm, Nar­i­nesingh, Ram­lo­gan and Com­pa­ny.

Nar­i­nesingh was the at­tor­ney who ap­peared for Peo­ple Unit­ed Re­spect­ing the En­vi­ron­ment (PURE) be­fore Jus­tice Mi­ra Dean-Amor­er in the High Court and was in­stru­men­tal in get­ting the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) to with­draw the Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance (CEC) that was grant­ed to Alutrint. That ef­fec­tive­ly stopped the con­tro­ver­sial alu­mini­um smelter project but the EMA has ap­pealed Dean-Amor­er's de­ci­sion and the mat­ter will be­gin in the High Court on Sep­tem­ber 21, Nar­i­nesingh said. She said her firm had agreed to join Ma­haraj in the law­suit against Al­coa.

Even if the trans­fer sta­tion shuts up shop in T&T, the law­suit will con­tin­ue against the par­ent com­pa­ny in the USA, she stat­ed. Cur­rent­ly, her firm is con­duct­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the claims of pol­lu­tion em­a­nat­ing from the trans­fer sta­tion, she in­di­cat­ed.

Noel told the Sun­day Guardian the case was called a few times but was post­poned on each oc­ca­sion. He said man­age­ment had been telling small con­trac­tors who ser­viced the trans­fer sta­tion that the op­er­a­tion was to be down­sized. Noel said he learnt that the com­pa­ny was sell­ing off some of its small­er barges. Ac­cord­ing to Noel, at one point in the 1990s Al­coa had of­fered the CPC an out-of-court set­tle­ment of US$7 mil­lion but he had turned the of­fer down as be­ing in­suf­fi­cient for jus­tice to be served.

ABOUT AL­COA

Al­coa be­gan op­er­a­tions here in 1941 with its ma­rine de­part­ment in Port-of-Spain and the trans-ship­ment of baux­ite from ship to barge to ship in the Gulf of Paria. Con­struc­tion of the mas­sive Tem­blado­ra Trans­fer Sta­tion be­gan in 1948, and in 1958 trans­ship­ment of baux­ite from Al­coa op­er­a­tions in Suri­name be­gan.

In 1983 the sta­tion be­gan han­dling alu­mi­na ox­ite on­ly, that is dis­charg­ing, stor­ing and then load­ing. It han­dles 525,000 met­ric tonnes of alu­mi­na a year, shipped main­ly to the USA, Cana­da and Eu­rope. Its Web site boasts that painstak­ing ef­forts are made by trans­fer sta­tion man­age­ment to en­sure that op­er­a­tions are en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly.