Legal Articles and Guides

In a landmark case, environmental activists have launched legal action against the government over its alleged poor progress in cleaning up air pollution in the Mpumalanga highveld. GroundWork and the Vukani Environmental Justice Movement in Action, represented by the Centre for Environmental Rights (CER), are demanding that the government clean up the air in the highly-polluted area, notes BusinessLIVE.

Environmental activists are concerned that an SCA judgment on Friday may pave the way for fracking across 5 500 farms, a vast tract of nearly two million hectares of arable land in northern KZN. According to a Sunday Times report, the court overturned a Western Cape High Court ruling that interdicted Texas-based Rhino Oil and Gas from moving ahead with aerial exploration on thousands of farms.

Talks this week between the national environmental authorities and the well-known Watson family of the Eastern Cape could prove crucial as to whether, and how, the family’s contentious Inyanda-Roodeplaat wind farm project is developed.

The Carbon Tax Act, which comes into effect on 1 June, will give effect to the polluter-pays principle, says a Cape Times report.

The prosecution of Aurora directors is expected to get under way at the Springs Magistrate's Court on Tuesday ‘for environmental and water transgressions at the failed Grootvlei mine near Springs in the Upper Vaal Management Area’, says the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa).

The City of Cape Town has welcomed the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) setting a date to hear its petition to buy electricity directly from independent power producers (IPPs). The city wants the Energy Minister and the National Energy Regulator (Nersa) to allow it to purchase power from IPPs.

The provincial government will not allow the Magwa and Majola Tea estates to be liquidated, says acting head of the Rural Development & Agrarian Reform Department Zoleka Makina. Makina said the government had sunk R116m into the business rescue process of the two projects in the past three years and had no intention of throwing in the towel now, notes a Daily Dispatch report.

For more than a decade Free State dairy farmer Petrus Willem Terblanche battled the Minister of Water & Environmental Affairs in a test case that continued even after his death. But now, two years after his death, he has lost.

In another blow for Kuils River residents who have been complaining about pollution from steel company Cisco, Mayor Dan Plato told them that he is referring their concerns to the national government. A report on the IoL site notes that Earl Polman, chairperson of Vredelust Ratepayers’ Association, said the City of Cape Town believed it had exhausted all options.

The controversial decision to grant environmental authorisation for the Watson family's massive wind farm project on the summit of the Groot Winterhoek mountains near Uitenhage has been overturned, at least temporarily.

In a case described by Judge Brian Spilg, of the Gauteng High Court (Johannesburg), as ‘straightforward’ but nevertheless believed to be SA’s first successful private prosecution of environmental crime, BP Southern Africa has been found guilty of failing to fulfil its duty to protect the environment by building or upgrading a number of petrol stations without relevant authorisation.

A prominent Cape Winelands farmer has one week left to destroy two ‘illegal’ vineyards, or risk the ignominy of watching the sheriff of the court doing it for him, says a Times Select report.

City of Cape Town mayoral committee member for energy and climate change, Phindile Maxiti, says the city will petition the Gauteng High Court (Johannesburg) to allow not only Cape Town, but other municipalities to be able to purchase energy from independent power producers (IPPs).

Sasol has denied claims by a whistle-blower that the petrochemical giant is to blame for the intentional pollution of the Vaal River, reports News24. The whistle-blower, also an official at the company, submitted that vanadium and potassium carbonate were among some of the dangerous chemicals Sasol continued to spill into the river.

The SANDF is unable to continue its clean-up work of the Sebokeng wastewater treatment plant and sources of sewage pollution in the Vaal River until R873m has been released by the Treasury, according to environmental non-profit organisation Save the Vaal Environment (SAVE).