Amanzimtoti show your displeasure to the Consultants and SANRAL.

Draft EIA Open House at the Toti Civic Centre 18th Nov2008 @ 16h30.

Do not waste your valuable time paging through a set of documents presented by the Independent Consultants who get their instructions and payment from SANRAL.
If you have the time the Executive Summary is enough to make you realize that there are many significant facts that affect us here on the Upper South Coast that wont be found in the 1000 pages of considerably biased justification you are expected to swallow, then allow SANRAL to go ahead with making us on the Upper South Coast pay for the 90 km of new road on the Wild Coast.

We will ask the Consultants to try to answer and dispute the following and a whole lot more.

Why no mention:
– Of the fact that a railway link will be the appropriate answer to all the needs of all people rich & poor, particularly in terms of affordable, safe, environmentally friendly transport, reducing heavy traffic on already overloaded roads and move agricultural and other goods and people for the sustainable future without fossil fuels been burnt and polluting our area.
- Of an alternate road around the outskirts towards the west of eThekwini.
- Of the fact that the Toll Gate at Isipingo will collect 86% of the cost of the 90 km strip of road on the Wild Coast at todays prices over 30 years, never mind the escalation in traffic and inflation.
- Of the fact that we are expected to pay 86 % of the cost for a road off which we will at most only use 15 km or only 2.68 %
- Of how the E Tag system is going to know that you came through the Main Toll Gate at Isipingo and left at the Joyner Ramp a distance of less than 1.5 km which will cost you R8 minimum.
- Of the fact that this new road is going to attract a considerable amount of traffic from west of eThekwini and put considerable strain on an already overloaded N3 and the poor unsuspecting motorist who have to access the N2 coming down the N3 and vice versa during peak times already a nightmare how will this be solved..
- Of how widening the N2 between Adams Road and Isipingo is going to be done.
- Of how the additional flow of traffic from the west is going to negate the widening of the road and loose any benefit of cutting down traveling time and justifying the toll payment.
- Of how we as motorists have no other alternative of traveling to and from our work place or schooling because of total lack of reliable safe and affordable public transport have now to bear the additional cost of being taxed to use an existing 60 year old road.
- Of why because our government has failed to provide enough funds to ensure that enough moneys is allocated to the provision and upkeep of our road net work, that SANRAL now feel they have the right to unfairly tax us on the Upper South Coast to pay for a road in another province.
- That if eThekwini had the full say over all the roads in the Metropolitan area as they should have, they would have insisted that the Developers of Arbour Town would have to pay the cost of widening the road from Winklespruit to Moss Kolnik because the shopping centre would be the main beneficiaries and also the cause of increased traffic on the road.

One is faced with an obvious question and that is seeing that there is a Government legislation that requires all these facts to be considered why this has not been done

I.e. National Environmental Management Act (NEMA)
Chapter 1 – Principles – sub section 2
Chapter (4) (i) The social, economic and environmental impacts of activities, including disadvantages and benefits must be considered, assessed and evaluated, and decisions must be appropriate in the lights of such consideration and assessment.

USCATA Nov 2008

Posted on November 13th, 2008
Filed under: Press Releases