Appeal against fish farm go-ahead

The Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber has rejected the assessment of the proposed Algoa Bay fish farm as flawed and has appealed against the government’s authorisation of the project.

The chamber said in its appeal letter this week that a broader strategic consideration of the project’s suitability needed to be undertaken with fresh consideration of the revenue and jobs that would be put at risk if the project went ahead, and the latest downscaling of confidence in the Ngqura fin fish enterprise.

In a March 17 letter to the department of environmental affairs, chamber CEO Nomkhita Mona said the integrated probe she and her team were calling for was fundamentally important not least to gauge overall costs and benefits.

“The business chamber is concerned about ... the substantive flaws in the basic assessment.

“In particular, the chamber believes that it is important that a far more extensive and regionally strategic economic impact assessment be conducted to adequately evaluate the impact of this development on the local and regional economy.

“This comprehensive assessment should incorporate a thorough economy-wide assessment of local and regional jobs that will likely be created, but also that which will be lost and put at risk as result of the fisheries department’s proposed aquaculture development.”

Mona said several stakeholders had requested this precise exercise during the public participation process but it was seemingly ignored or discounted by Anchor Environmental Consultants, the independent practitioner appointed by fisheries to assess the project application.

The chamber also disagreed “in the strongest possible terms” with Anchor’s view that the socioeconomic assessment part of its final report was comprehensive, she said.

Anchor based this view on specialist studies undertaken — which noted time and budget limitations, a “trade-off survey” based on interviews with 154 people on the Port Elizabeth beachfront, revenue benefits unsupported by marketing analysis, and the need for external costs to be valued and incorporated.

“In reality, these studies are not separately, comparatively, or even jointly comprehensive.

“They do not give comfort.”

Mona said during early stakeholder consultation on the project the chamber had also challenged Anchor’s rationale for which positive or negative effects had been assessed at local or regional level.

The consultant had disagreed but as a result there was a key downward revision of the rating for the fin fish farm component in its final report.

“This revision means that the ‘significance’ of the positive investment-related economic impacts of fin fish farming at the Algoa 7 site off Ngqura is rated as ‘low’, with a worryingly high degree of confidence in that assessment.

“And it merely improves to a ‘medium’ rating the positive economic impacts — with even worse ‘low’ confidence after possible ‘benefit-enhancing measures’.”

In light of this revision, a risk-adverse authority had to ask itself whether the external risks of fin fish farming to the physical environment and the tourism economy were worth it when the proposed benefits were now deemed less certain and less significant, Mona said.

“It is these gaps and unnecessary risk-taking in the recent assessment processes that the Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber wishes to draw your attention to, so as to find a more sustainable and strategic long-term future for this city-region.

“The chamber supports developments which will lead to the creation of jobs but believes that this must be done in a responsible manner that comprehends the long-term impacts and the holistic economic growth prospects of the city-region.”

The environment department issued an authorisation for the fish farm in late February and the appeals deadline is on Thursday.

NMU African penguin specialist Dr Lorien Pitchegru has warned that uneaten food and antibiotics from the fin fish cages will deoxygenate and pollute surrounding waters, chasing away prey fish and placing further pressure on the already endangered African penguin which lives on the nearby islands.