'Strong case' for appeal against toll road
2008-12-04
THERE is a strong case to be made that the authorisation of the environmental impact assessment of the N1/N2 Winelands Toll Road was deficient because the socio-economic effects were not considered. This was the legal opinion obtained by the Toll Road Pressure Group opposing the proposed toll road. The opinion, by Advocate Andrew Breitenbach, assisted by constitutional expert Nazreen Bawa, argued that there are grounds to have the decision set aside as the EIA was confined to the biosphysical aspect alone while other issues, such as the profound impact it could have on poor communities, were ignored. Further, that the public participation process is flawed because it did not provide essential information (such as toll fees or public transport and frequent user discounts) and because it did not take special steps to consult members of communities where a high proportion of people cannot read or write. He makes the point that the Environmental Impact Report specifically excluded the tolling aspect, and instructed Sanral to carry that out as a separate public participation. The EIA has been approved by the national minister of Environmental Affairs, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, and the project was subsequently approved by the national minister of Transport, Jeff Radebe. But at a recent meeting of the Provincial Standing Committee on Finances, Western Cape Transport Minister Koleka Mqulwana supported a committee resolution to reject all the toll roads planned for the N1 and N2, and to consider what action needed to be taken to overturn Radebe`s decision to approve the toll roads. At the meeting, JC van der Walt, the Regional Manager of the SA National Roads Agency Limited (Sanral), admitted that the R300 would also be tolled. The R300 is almost exclusively used by commuters, mostly from the poorest areas of Cape Town. A private sector consortium has been driving the toll road project from 1998 to date. The consortium known as the Protea Parkways Consortium (which has the same directors as Basil Read Construction) submitted an unsolicited proposal to Sanral in March 1998 to develop a proposal to upgrade, construct, maintain, operate and toll sections of the N1 and N2. The unsolicited proposal process was formalised after a period of approximately two years and the Consortium was awarded Scheme Developer Status in April 2000, and commenced with the Initial Scheme Development Phase as a partnership between Sanral and the consortium. They also managed the long EIA process which was finally completed in 2006.
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