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Mercury - Wild Coast toll road plan revived

                 ONLINE EDITION POWERED BY IOL Thursday 28th April    

             

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                             Regional Papers Post Cape Argus Star Sunday Tribune Cape Times Pretoria News Daily News Business Report  

             
        
                     SOUTH AFRICA 
             
              Govt to hear proposal

              Wild Coast toll road plan revived  
              April 28, 2005

              By Tony Carnie

              Just months after Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk pulled the plug on the proposed Wild Coast Toll Road, a fresh plan for the same toll road is to be presented to the government.

              The SA National Roads Agency told The Mercury this week that a new consultancy firm had been appointed to conduct a new environmental impact assessment of the controversial Durban-East London toll-road proposal.

              The fresh application by Cape Town company CCA Environmental is scheduled to be presented to officials from Van Schalkwyk's Environment Department tomorrow.

              This follows a pre-application meeting on April 14 attended by the national Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, Eastern Cape environmental authorities, independent environmental consultants and the roads agency.

              Flaws

              The first application, which was initially approved by former Environment Department director-general Chippy Olver, was thrown out in December by Van Schalkwyk because of fatal legal flaws.

              He said the first procedure had been tainted by the close and "inappropriate" links between the N2 Toll Road Consortium and the Bohlweki environmental consultancy, which co-ordinated the project impact assessment.

              The legal defects had been so serious that it had not been necessary for him to respond formally to more than 200 other appeals from a variety of interest groups, including environmentalists, Durban commuters and producers, such as Toyota and South African Breweries.

              Van Schalkwyk did not refer to any directors or managers by name, but a Sunday newspaper published a report last year which noted that Rufus Maruma, the Chairman of Bohlweki Environmental, was also a non-executive director of Group Five, one of the construction and engineering giants which make up the N2 toll consortium  

              Van Schalkwyk's decision took several observers by surprise because the project has strong political backing and has been punted by some groups as essential to the development of the Eastern Cape region.

              Although the new application has been lodged in the name of the agency, the plan is being driven by a consortium of major companies which submitted an unsolicited bid for the project several years ago.

              The consortium is made up of: Group Five; Grinaker-LTA; Intertoll; Hawkins, Hawkins and Osborne; Stewart Scott; WBHO Construction; Kagiso Financial; and Rand Merchant Bank.

              The agency said there was no guarantee that this group would win the contract because a new tender process would be held if environmental approval was given.

              It not clear yet to what extent the original study will be regarded as legally tainted, or whether the new consultants will be able to salvage parts of the original specialist studies on noise, visual, tourism, ecology and social impacts dating back to 2001.

              The agency would not comment either on whether the latest plan had been modified to consider route-change proposals made by environmental groups.

              Government officials have previously denied persistent claims that the toll route is designed to service a major Australian dune mining venture in the Xolobeni area, south of Port Edward.

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