#Durban DigOut Port

[SA BOY]

2 years at least

[romanSA]

Wow! Didn't realise that the entrance was going to be this wide!

---------------

Monday May 06, 2013

Fears for beach as drilling starts for new Durban harbour

Part of a roughly 2km stretch of coast along Isipingo beach could be the possible location for Transnet's new dig-out port entrance.


Transnet has begun geotechnical drilling along Isipingo Beach.

Geotechnical drilling along the beach began this week to determine ground conditions below the surface of the site, which will enable Transnet to plan the design of the new port at the old Durban International Airport site.

Transnet maintains that the plans are at an early stage and that no final decision has been taken on where the harbour channel will be located.

However, members of the local ratepayers association said they should have been informed that "their beach" could be turned into the entrance channel, leaving no opportunity for bathing, fishing and surfing.

Grant Macfarlane, Transnet's geotechnical engineer, said they were establishing the geographical profile of the area and drilling boreholes of various depths from 21m to as deep as 80m below ground level. The holes are 70mm in diameter, about the size of a coffee-cup rim, and while the area is cordoned off to the public, the beach is still open.

"Because one of the biggest cost components when construction starts will be the dredging of the entrance channel, we need to know what is below the beach surface," said Macfarlane.

Seven borehole sites, which dot the 2-3km stretch of beach up to the canal near oil refinery Sapref, will be drilled for soil and rock samples.

These are the final seven boreholes of 80 to be drilled on the whole proposed Durban Dig-Out Port site.

"Ideally we are hoping to find more soil as it is easy to dredge and easily disposed off, whereas rock is not," said Macfarlane.

The activity on the beach is expected to be completed in two weeks' time, depending on the weather conditions.

Once all the results from the drilling are compiled, Transnet will be able to use the information to design the port.

While he emphasised that the plans were "very preliminary" at present, Macfarlane said the entrance to the new port could possibly begin north of the mangroves at the Isipingo estuary, without affecting the environmentally-sensitive area.

The entrance channel to the new port is expected to be about 500m wide and 18m below sea level.

The geotechnical investigation will be used by engineers when they start to look at various design options for the proposed port later this year, said Macfarlane.

The R75-billion port will allow bigger container ships, and the first phase of the port needs to be completed by 2020, as capacity at the current Durban port would run out by 2019.

Transnet hopes that construction will begin in 2016.

However Dharmanand Nowbuth, chairman of the Isipingo Ratepayers Association, said they should have been informed of the plans that could turn the beach into the entrance to the port.

"This area is visited by locals and people from inland. Where will people be able to swim, surf, fish and even just come to play at the beach? Transnet should have been more open about the plans and let us know what they are doing on the beach and why," said Nowbuth.

He said fishermen at the Durban harbour were not allowed to fish on the pier, and questioned what would become of the local fishing community.

"They are taking all this away from the community and what are they giving us in return? Its an insult to the community. There is no consideration for people who live here," he said.

Engineers, meanwhile, have already been drilling for samples at the old Durban International Airport site since November.

Samples taken from the old airport site have revealed what ground and rock conditions were millions of years ago.

"The area where the runway is located was once a riverbed millions of years ago," Macfarlane said. Rock samples found there contained sand and rocks fused together.

The oldest rock type found was the Natal Group Sandstone, which dates back up to 500-million years ago.

"This sand is unique to the province, and was found 21m below the ground where the carport area is located," said Macfarlane.

Other rocks are Dwyka Tillite which are about 300 million years old, and represents the end of the Ice Age when glaciers covered this part of the continent; and Zululand Group Siltstone of between 65 and 100 million years old.

The Independent on Saturday


http://www.iolproperty.co.za/roller/...ch_as_drilling

[Project Director]

500 mtr wide seems to equate to double ship movement, existing harbour 240 mtr, safely handles single movement.

[dysan1]

good to see some progress on the go. I gather a double lane chanel means faster turnaround of ships?

[Project Director]

In private hands it has to be the way to operate.....

[romanSA]

Environmental racism in Durban?
2013-05-13 15:00

Andreas Späth

For the government, Transnet and the eThekwini Municipality, the proposed expansion of the Durban harbour is a no-brainer: it's an integral part of the national development strategy; it will promote trade, create jobs and bolster economic growth.

The fact that people living in the area stand to be negatively impacted by the development is a minor inconvenience. They’re collateral damage in the path of progress.

This being South Africa, of course, any opposition to national priorities is sure to descend into an argument over race in a few easy steps. When Transnet’s CEO Brain Molefe asked the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance's (SDCEA) Desmond D'Sa: “Do you want to take us back? Do you want to deny black people jobs and development, just to save some frogs?”, the chairperson of the veteran environmental right’s group must have been rather perplexed.

After all, the constituency D'Sa represents consists largely of low-income Indian and African families who in the past were routinely exposed to severe environmental hazards on top of standard-issue Apartheid racial discrimination. The message seems clear: they and the state of the neighbourhood they live in didn’t matter then and they still don’t matter today.

But the inhabitants of the South Durban Basin have had enough and are leading the charge against the R250 billion mega-project, which involves an expansion of the existing port, a brand-new dig-out harbour on the site of the city’s old airport, as well as associated infrastructural changes and road extensions.

It’s not hard to understand why. For decades, they have been surrounded by some of the most toxic industrial installations imaginable. They’ve regularly been exposed to oil leaks, explosions, chemical spills, noxious smells and poisonous emissions from the two crude oil refineries, the several landfills, the country’s two largest paper mills and busiest container port, as well as the numerous chemical plants and factories located in their back yard.

Studies have documented elevated levels of dangerous chemicals in the sea water and air here, and investigations have found rates of asthma and leukaemia that are substantially higher than in most other parts of South Africa. Kids in the area are up to four times more likely to be suffering from chest complaints than children living elsewhere in Durban.

Naturally, the locals are concerned about the impacts the new and expanded port will have on their environment and their lives. These include, among others:

- the displacement of thousands of households;

- increased truck traffic in an area already plagued by high rates of road accidents;

- even more polluting industries;

- increased carbon emissions and vulnerability to the effects of climate change;

- loss of biodiversity and unique ecosystems – the area of the old Durban airport happens to be one of the largest remaining home ranges of Pickersgill's reed frog (Hyperolius pickersgilli), one of world’s rarest frogs and presumably the amphibian that so incenses the Transnet CEO; and

- a further threat to the few remaining and fragile estuarine habitats in the region, including mangrove forests, tidal flats and sandbanks, all of which are important to a number of endemic and migratory marine and bird species.

What’s more, anti-port activists like D'Sa aren’t against development per se. They just don’t like it when it’s guaranteed to be harmful to people and the environment. They are interested in integrated “high-employment, community-strengthening development”, but complain about a supposedly holistic public participation and consultation process that appears to be intended as little more than a rubber-stamping exercise.

So is this really a case of environmental racism then? Sure, but not in the twisted logic with which Brian Molefe seems to approach the subject. What are chances that the project would even have been proposed if the area was predominantly inhabited by white folks?

But it’s time to move the analysis forward just a little. More than being an example of environmental racism, this is a case of environmental elitism, of environmental classism.

The people in the South Durban Basin, regardless of their skin colour, simply don’t matter a whole lot in the calculations and machinations of those who’re supposedly leading all of us towards progress and prosperity. And that’s the main reason they deserve the support of the rest of us.

- Andreas freelance writer with a PhD in geochemistry. Follow him on Twitter: @Andreas_Spath

Send your comments to Andreas


http://www.news24.com/Columnists/And...urban-20130513

[romanSA]

Funding for Durban dig-out port uncertain
13 May 2013 10:18

There seems little doubt that despite questions and some objections, the proposed new dig-out port on the site of the old Durban International airport will go ahead. Exploratory drilling on the site by Transnet is already under way - what it calls early research - into the geotechnical composition of the soil.

The big question is how much the new port is going to cost and how this is going to be funded.

"The planning at this stage is that if the proposed dig-out port goes ahead, construction will start in 2016 and the first phase will ready by 2020," says Marc Descoins, Transnet's programme director for the proposed new port. "That will cost betweem R35bn and R40bn, in today's money."

However, that is only the first phase. There are four phases to the project, which once complete in 2040 could cost as much as R100bn. Inflation, local economic conditions and export demand could all affect the final price.

"The final cost could vary, up or down," says Descoins.

If the total cost comes to R100bn, it is not part of Transnet's R300bn infrastructural budget under the revitalisation plan for the next seven years.

Much of the funding will have to come from the private sector. Transnet's chief executive Brian Molefe made that clear in Durban last week. "We are looking at the option of partnerships and we are looking at a build, operate and transfer model. At the moment we are testing expressions of interest," he told a meeting with local community members.

But just how private-sector investment will be catered for is not clear. Transnet says it will own the land, so it seems a profit-sharing formula will have to be worked out for private-sector investors.

"We are looking at a number of different funding models but nothing has been decided. There are seven different work streams, one of which is funding." Descoins says he cannot name any private investors Molefe might have been talking to.

Given the long-term nature of the project, a degree of vagueness is understandable. More clarity is expected when phase one construction is commissioned in 2020.

Source: Financial Mail via I-Net Bridge


http://www.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/494/93235.html

[romanSA]

Transnet has bought land for dig-out port

May 23 2013 at 08:00am

Transnet had bought the land for the proposed new dig-out port in Durban and would now seek private investment to develop and operate the project, programme director Marc Descoins said yesterday. “Transnet has already purchased the old decommissioned Durban airport and is negotiating to purchase 31 more properties needed by the middle of next year,” Descoins said at a conference in Durban on maximising African port capacity. “The port would need to be promulgated, environmental authorisation obtained and then we can make a final decision on the role that private investment will play.” The ports and rail operator plans to build the new Durban terminal and to develop an older one as part of a R37 billion plan scheduled for completion by 2050. The new complex is designed to be the largest container port in Africa. “Container sizes have doubled in the last decade,” Descoins said. Durban could handle the largest vessels able to pass through the Panama Canal, although new models might be too large, he said. – Bloomberg

http://www.iol.co.za/business/compan...4#.UZ3AgcrrjyA

[romanSA]

Wonder how long this will last? This surely can't survive through the port's construction? I suspect it will eventually move to the Point Waterfront, where the SA Maritime School and Transport College is based.

--------------------

Maritime School of Excellence for Durban

June 5 2013 at 06:50pm
By Suren Naidoo
Copy of NM Durban Intl archpic (34377765)

INLSA

The terminal buildings of the old Durban International Airport, which will become home to Transnets new Maritime School of Excellence. Transnet bought the site from the Airport Company of South Africa in a R1.8-billion deal last year and plans to develop a new dig-out port on much of the remaining site.

The terminal buildings of the old Durban International Airport are being transformed into a Maritime School of Excellence.


Transnet group chief executive Brian Molefe said the plan was to develop critical maritime skills locally and in the southern African region before developments such as the Durban dig-out port.

Transnet bought the site from the Airports Company of South Africa in a R1.8 billion deal last year. The dig-out port will take up much of the prime site.

Molefe spoke to The Mercury after Transnet National Ports Authority chief exe-|cutive Tau Morwe cited the project at the recent African Renaissance conference in Durban.

The initiative was part of government strategy for South Africa to leverage off its long coastline and many ports to develop the country into a global player in the maritime industry.

Transnet spokesman Mboniso Sigonyela said the parastatal’s plan would merge the TNPA School of Ports and Transnet Port Terminal’s School of Ports Operations into a single maritime school.

The school is now on the old School of Ports campus in Durban’s Bayhead area. The main campus is to be relocated to the old airport terminal.

“Refurbishments are under way and occupation is expected by the end of June. The school’s old campus will ultimately become a Durban satellite campus. Other satellite campuses in Richards Bay, Port Elizabeth/Ngqura and Cape Town will be established,” Sigonyela said.

“Included among the school’s benefits are improving our capability to build maritime skills locally, regionally and internationally; providing a more focused service offering for the maritime sector; establishing partnerships with service providers to ensure delivery of globally competitive and accredited training modules across the maritime value chain; delivering integrated training and development offerings; building capacity to avoid future skills shortages; streamlining maritime processes and introducing effective controls; and optimising the utilisation of resources.

“Students will be trained |in marine operations, including pilot training, master |port operations, global marine best practice, berthing master training and container handling.

“There are also courses available in handling break bulk and automotive, crane operations training and port terminals management training.”

The school will accommodate about 240 students.

“The merger of the two schools and repositioning of the school has resulted in about 100 new permanent jobs,” Sigonyela said.

The new maritime school was “a 100 percent Transnet-driven” project.

“However, other strategic alliances and partnerships are being considered,” Sigonyela said.

“Transnet places great emphasis on training and skills development, and as such R7.7 billion will be spent over the next seven years.”

The establishment of the school was also a response to the New Growth Path skills requirement in the Maritime sector.

Transnet could not give details on how much it was investing in the establishment of the school as development was under way and the project was being finalised.

Meanwhile the South African Maritime Safety Authority will host a maritime career expo and job summit in Durban next week.from June 10-12.

Sindiswa Nhlumayo, the head of the authority’s Centre for Maritime Excellence, said South Africa had fewer than 2 400 seafarers, despite its coastline of 3 000km and its maritime assets.

“That is why this career expo and jobs summit are so important.

“Samsa aims to bring 10 000 pupils from around KwaZulu-Natal to the event,” Nhlumayo said.


http://www.iol.co.za/business/busine...8#.UbH2IJzrjyB