Going Green Again

Another old faithful that reached the end of its life and left to decay in the bush at Glen Lyndon, near Bedford. These old cars always make interesting photo subjects.

Going Green

Nature has a way of taking back the things man leaves behind, like this old car that probably traveled many miles along the dusty roads of the Eastern Cape, now left abandoned at Glen Lyndon near Bedford.

While on the subject of fracking let's look at the spin

Yesterday I had a look at the Shell Commitment to the Karoo and could not resist having a closer look at the spin in their statement. What are your thoughts? 

 
The world littered with environmental disasters that were born out of good intentions and promises.  Let's hope that the Karoo does not become another of these.

Fracking: The new swear word

Shell has carried a full page advert in this week’s Weekend Post on their “Commitments to the Karoo,” in relation to their plans to exploit the natural gas resources in the area. The statement has been very carefully crafted and the way I read it, Shell will want us to believe that the exploitation of natural gas in the Karoo is a noble venture that will have no negative environmental impact.

As far as I am concerned this is a load of bollocks. There is a lot that is not being said in the statement and most of the commitments are either conditional or open to interpretation and provide a useful back door, from what the intent seems to reflect at first glance.

For the unenlightened, “fracking” is short for hydraulic fracturing. It is a new way of extracting gas from the shale deposits that lie beneath the surface of the Karoo.

“Surely the extraction of this gas will have a positive spinoff for the country,” you may ask.

For those making the money the answer is probably, “yes.” but it is debateable whether it will be good for the country, especially the Karoo. It is not the extraction of the gas that is the problem, but the way they go about extracting the gas that is the problem and its long term effects on the environment.

Natural gas is trapped in some layers of the shale, but to extract it is not just about drilling a hole and hoping that it will rise to the surface. It is a lot more complex than that. In the past it was considered to be too expensive to exploit this gas commercially, but advances in horizontal drilling techniques and the process of hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” have now made it viable and led to a global rush to exploit the shale gas reserves.

Unfortunately the Karoo is high on the agenda for the exploitation of this gas and the Government has awarded licences to five companies (Royal Dutch Shell, Falcon Oil & Gas, Anglo American, Bundu Gas and Oil and a joint venture between Sasol, Statoil of Norway and Chesapeake Energy of the USA) to assess the potential reserves. If the reserves are substantial it is intended that this will lead to their exploitation, but first they have to go through the motions of environmental impact assessments, to this legally.

Fracking involves injecting pressurised water mixed with sand and a cocktail of dodgy chemicals into boreholes to crack open the shale and release the gas to escape to the surface. Anything up to 20 million litres of water and 300 tonnes of chemicals could be pumped into a single well for the fracking process.

That is a lot of water, in an area where water is a scarce commodity. So where is it going to come from? This is ignored by the statement. It has been suggested by some wag that sea water can be shipped in. The last thing the Karoo needs is the contamination of our groundwater by sea water and a cocktail of chemicals that are used during fracking.

The protagonists will claim that the chemicals are safe, but from what I have read many of these are known to be carcinogenic. Once the damage is done there is no turning back the clock, you cannot get down there to clean up the mess, it is there forever. Then there is the problem of some of the contaminated water getting back to the surface, which in turn will pose some serious disposal problems aside from the threat it will have to livestock and wildlife.”

Water is the life blood of the Karoo. If the underground water is polluted that will be the end of farming out there.

From what I have read the experience of fracking in the USA, Canada and Austratia has not been a very positive one. Tests in areas where fracking is taking place have shown high levels of ethane and methane in the water and many people are finding that they can ignite the gas from water coming from the taps.

The one statement that shell did get right is:

"The Karoo is a special place for South Africans. We must preserve it for our future and our children’s future.”

Let's keep it that way and not frack up the Karoo.

I is for Impala and Industry and I

Oops posted this one a few hours before Wednesday.

In case you are wondering why I have chosen such diverse subjects, let me enlighten you. For starters they all begin with an “I” and secondly they were all introduced to the Eastern Cape and two of them pose their own unique ecological problems.

Impala are not endemic to the Eastern Cape, but have been successfully introduced to many private game parks and hunting farms. The natural distribution of Impala is roughly from the Limpopo Province of South Africa through to the southern half of Kenya.



The SA National Parks Board, as well as other purists, are totally against the introduction of species that are not found naturally in the area. SANParks will in fact cull any Impala that stray into the precincts of Addo Elephant National Park.

This is not surprising as man has caused many problems with the introduction of alien species, to areas where they are not meant to be:

• A few domestic cats brought to Marion Island became feral and thrived to such an extent that they became a threat to the bird life. Several years ago a hunting team was brought in to exterminate them.
• Some one had the bright idea of introducing fallow deer to the Eastern Cape. They are now regarded by many farmers as vermin.
• Look at what happened when a few rabbits, introduced to Australia, were let loose.
• The Brown Tree Snakes on Guam Island have almost decimated the bird population and are a threat to the remaining birds.

The list is endless and leads to to this question:
What foot prints will Impala leave on the ecology in the Eastern Cape in the future?

The photos below are rather striking shots of the carbon black factory just on the outskirts of Port Elizabeth. Carbon black is an essential ingredient for the building of vehicle tyres, so I guess it is here to stay.
The factory is built on the edge of a wetland at the Swartkops River Estuary and just across the road that the locals call “Smelly Creek”, is the sewerage works. Both facilities are within spitting distance of the beach and both contribute to the pungent odor passing motorists and the Amsterdam Hoek residents have to endure.


When I arrived in Port Elizabeth in 1978 the silent shell, of a once popular spa hotel was still standing on the Grahamstown Road, behind this factory. It was built over a natural hot water spring. The hotel could not, however, survive the encroachment of industry and rapidly lost popularity and the City lost a tourist attraction. The spring has since been sealed and the hotel was demolished in the early 1980’s.

Who knows what the long term effects, the emissions from this and other factories around the world, have on the environment?


The legacy of the early city fathers is not good. It seems that they did as they pleased and never spared a thought for the future or for the environment. This begs the question:

“What legacy do I intend leaving behind, for my children and for my children’s children?”