South Durban Expands Community Monitoring Network as Refineries Continue to Poison the Air, Spread Money for Development and Push for Expansions
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Welcome
to South Durban. Homes, schools and small business struggle to breathe
in the shadow of refineries, chemical plants and government indiffernce. |
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| Frank,
who lives on Ballerina Terrace - a street that dead ends into Engen
refinery - points to his recently repainted home where chemicals have
eaten away at the walls. |
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Desmond
D'sa, chairperson of the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance
(SDCEA), explains to residents of Isipingo how they can gather evidence
to make the neighboring Shell refinery clean up their act. |
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| Avena
Bhikha, Project Co-ordinator at SDCEA, explains how pollution log
sheets kept by residents are entered into a geographic information
mapping system to document increased pollution problems. This evidence
is critical as companies like Shell continue to claim their emissions
are going down despite the facts. |
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Steven
Van Wyk, Events Coordinator of SDCEA, opens a community meeting in the
Merebank by updating residents on the week of activities with GCM that
included Bucket Brigade trainings and air sampling. |
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| Melissa,
a young resident and learner in Merebank, listens intently to the
explanation of how air samples, complaint logs and a health study will
be combined to pressure industry to clean up. |
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Merebank
residents have suffered many serious health problems caused by air
pollution. These two women spoke of how most of their families have
suffered at died from cancer and other illnesses. |
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| Desmond
urges residents to reject the blatant cover-up of pollution problems by
industry. Local refineries are running around South Durban offering to
plant tress and pay small grants to community groups in order to buy
good will and ignore their pollution. |
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The
final South Durban community event was a youth meeting in Wentworth
that included a showing of "Dying to Breathe", a new film about
pollution and health in Durban. |
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| Youth members of SDCEA have become actively involved in campaign to force refineries to clean up air pollution. |
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Avena
explains how recent flaring incidents at Engen refinery have affected
local residents health and that the local health department have
refused to take any action to stop the threat. |
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| Denny
Larson of GCM explains how new monitoring technologies are being
expanded and made available to communities through the "Beyond Bucket
Brigade" project. |
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| Youth
crowd around Steven as he demonstrates the bucket device and its
simple, yet effective method for catching polluters in the act of
poisoning the air.
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