Fracking likely to burden small towns

Fracking could spell disaster for poor and corrupt municipalities, bringing further harm to areas already poorly governed, writes Sarah Wild.

Cape Town - Fracking, already controversial for its potential environmental impact, could spell disaster for poor and corrupt municipalities, bringing further harm to areas already poorly governed.

This is one of the possibilities sketched out in an as-yet-unreleased assessment of the possible impact of hydraulic fracturing to recover shale gas in South Africa.

Read: Official warns of fracking pollution

This week, an assessment team of scientists and experts released the first chapter of a highly anticipated report on fracking, and its likely impact, to help guide government policy.

While exploiting the natural gas could provide a much-needed new energy source for electricity-hungry South Africa, the team says it could also inadvertently entrench historical inequality, and disrupt the social fabric of the region where the gas can be exploited.

Commissioned by the government’s interdepartmental task team in May last year, the report is the first science-based assessment of shale exploration in what has been, at times, a highly emotional debate.

The government found that “there is a lack of information locally to enable robust decision-making on the matter”, said the departments of Environmental Affairs, Science and Technology, Water and Sanitation, and Mineral Resources at the launch of the assessment exercise last year.

Assessment leader Professor Bob Scholes said: “The first chapter is a scenarios chapter whose sole purpose is to give the assessment chapters a common baseline from which to work.”

One issue for investigation, the team flagged, is that already-rich areas will benefit from fracking, while citizens in poor areas may miss the economic boom and end up worse than they started.

“Those towns within efficient municipalities are likely to steadily grow their economic base... This will lock in further rounds of investment,” they wrote.

“Where municipalities are poorly skilled, corrupt or politically conflict-ridden, the only force for economic sustainability will be civil servants and middle-class investors, whose numbers may well shrink as they migrate away.”

Shale gas has been touted as a way to boost energy security and development in the country, and move South Africa away from its reliance on coal for electricity generation.

However, civil society and environmental groups have opposed the move to hydraulically fracture the Karoo, saying that it will destroy fragile ecosystems and contaminate groundwater in the arid area.

The government view of fracking has been somewhat more optimistic.

“One area of real opportunity for South Africa is the exploitation of shale gas,” said Rural Development Minister Gugile Nkwinti at a briefing of the economic sectors, employment and infrastructure development cluster this week.

Exploration for the gas was set to commence in the next year, he said. “This will lead to excellent prospects for beneficiation and add value to our mineral wealth.”

However, it could spell disaster for poor and corrupt municipalities, according to the assessment, which is to be released to the public at http://seasgd.csir.co.za.

The assessment will focus on 12 areas: biodiversity and ecosystems services, water resources (surface and groundwater), geophysics, economics (including agriculture and tourism), spatial planning, national energy planning, waste management, human health, air quality, social fabric, visual, heritage resources and sense of place.

Scholes, who is a professor at the University of the Witwatersrand, and an associate research at the CSIR, emphasised that the issue of municipal capacity is “an issue raised for investigation by the assessment”.

The shale assessment area extends from Carnarvon in the north, down to Prince Albert in the south, and from just outside Calvinia to Queenstown.

“There is a marked difference between municipalities in the western and eastern parts of the study area,” the authors of the report write. Municipal development in “the erstwhile ‘homelands’ was rudimentary at best, while municipalities in the erstwhile ‘white South Africa’ steadily developed over the decades”.

This disparity in development means that economies in western towns are, in general, more diversified and resilient, while those in the east have higher unemployment rates, and are more dependent on government services.

Incompetent municipalities with a history of poor governance, corruption and a lack of capacity, may not be able to manage the impact and implications of fracking, the authors warn.

“Municipal capacity, as a determinant of development, will be critical in future as many types of investment – including mining, manufacturing, tourism and potentially shale gas exploration, development and production – depend on at least a minimum of municipal competence in key functions such as water provision, road maintenance and disaster management.”

“It is possible that the weaker municipalities may steadily improve their performance. However, their ability to deal with complex aspects, for example, of manufacturing and mining investment will take many years to develop.”

Without these skills, municipalities will not be able to manage the rush of people, the pollution control, the water monitoring, infrastructure safety or any of the myriad areas of concern around shale gas exploration and hydraulic fracturing.

“It is not at all clear whether the municipalities in either the western or eastern parts of the study area can manage these issues, or whether they have the institutional capacity to learn how to manage them,” the authors write.

The influx of people and money into some relatively poor towns will also dramatically affect their social fabric, a collection of intangible variables such as race relations, class systems, intergenerational poverty, among others.

“These dimensions of the social fabric are likely to be profoundly influenced by sudden social changes, whether positive or negative,” the report says.

“Even positive changes, such as new factories or the establishment of new independent power producers in the area may lead to sudden changes in income that can disrupt fragile social systems.”

Boom-and-bust cycles, which often accompany mining activities, are likely to be even more disruptive to these towns, and the disruption will linger long after the shale activity has ended.

CAPE TIMES