Environmentalists say EIA for Soda Ash project not participatory enough

Birdlife Africa Partnership (BAP) members and associates have expressed deepest concern regarding a proposal by government and a private firm called Tata Chemicals to construct a soda ash extraction plant at Lake Natron in the country.

BAP members and associates from 23 countries who are meeting in Nairobi for a council meeting showed their concern saying the Environmental Impact Assessment process to establish the project had not been participatory enough.
The project proponents have not consulted enough with all interested and affected parties-institutions, communities and individuals,? they said.

The information made available in Dar es Salaam yesterday said that Lake Natron was designated by Birdlife International as an important bird area and a wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention.

Globally, it is the most important breeding site for the Lesser Flamingo, a bird listed in the IUCN Red List of threatened species, BAP said in the statement.

The statement said the area accounted for 75 per cent of the world?s Lesser Flamingos and it?s the only site in the region where the species had bred for the last 45 years.

The same flamingos fed in thousands in other Rift Valley lakes, and were the reason that the great American naturalist and artist Roger Tory Peterson called Lake Nakuru ?the world?s greatest ornithological spectacle?.

It says BAP was concerned because during breeding, flamingos were very sensitive to disturbance, and the proposed development might lead to breeding failure at the site, fast tracking the species towards extinction.

Regional extinction of the Lesser Flamingo would in turn have far reaching impacts on national economies and the tourism industry in the East African region.

In Kenya?s central rift, for instance, the tourism industry was largely supported by the Rift Valley Lakes and the pink flamingos, whose only breeding site was now under threat, the statement said.

It further explained that the project was planning to establish a soda ash processing plant initially with a capacity of 500, 000 metric tonnes per year, which would later expand to 1 million tonnes per year.

The infrastructure that would come with the plant include an 11.5 megawatt coal fired thermal power plant, a tarmac road, a rail road, a complex network of pipes to transport the brine and accommodation of over 1,200 workers, it said.

The soda ash production would consume over 106,000 litres of fresh water per hour, the abstraction of which would be from the water scarce region, a situation likely to create a water crisis, with devastating effects on the livelihoods of local pastoralist communities, their animal and wildlife, it added.

An influx of people and heavy machinery, infrastructure, increased air and water pollution would lead to general environmental degradation and permanent loss of the natural condition of the land.

This would affect the pastoralist community who largely depends on the lake and the surrounding grassland for their livelihood and negate the gains that had been made on biodiversity conservation in the region.

It said efforts to contact Tata Chemicals and Norconsult (the EAIA consultants) to obtain documents related to the study through the Lake Natron Consultative Group had not been successful.

``We now have information that the EIA document has been submitted to the National Environmental Council (NEMC) of Tanzania for approval,`` it said.

Recent media reports said the Tanzanian Government intended to go on with the proposed project.