High Court Ruling in South Africa Demands UPL Take Measures to Avert Durban’s Future Toxic Chemical Water Spills

More than two years after at least 5,000 tonnes of farm poisons and other ‘agricultural remedies’ went up in flames or flowed into a river north of the city, legal disputes about the aftermath of the chemical pollution disaster came to a head in the KwaZulu-Natal Division of the High Court in Durban.

The eThekwini (Durban) Municipality has won a significant — albeit temporary — court victory to avert the growing risk of another spillage of poison-polluted water into a major river and the sea north of the coastal holiday city.

In a ruling late on 2 November, Acting Judge Ian Dutton ordered the Mumbai-based UPL agrochemicals giant to stop discharging water from its new chemical treatment plant into the Ohlanga River with immediate effect, and to rather hire wastewater tankers to cart polluted water to a reputable hazardous waste dump.

More than two years after at least 5,000 tonnes of farm poisons and other “agricultural remedies” went up in flames or flowed into a river north of the city, legal disputes about the aftermath of the chemical pollution disaster came to a head in the KwaZulu-Natal Division of the High Court in Durban.

In very simple terms, the legal dispute is about the permitted water levels of a “pollution control dam” (PCD) — a hastily modified depression in the ground that is being used to capture the remnant poison overflow from the UPL warehouse in Cornubia, Durban.

This dam contains up to 10,000 cubic metres of contaminated water, but senior eThekwini officials…