End of an era

After standing behind the South Durban crease for 10 years, ECOSERV has finally faced their last ball

After a decade of managing the South Durban sulphur dioxide (SO₂) air quality monitoring system, ECOSERV has handed the bat back to those who have the weight of the law behind their swing - the City of Durban 's Health Department.

“This has been a long and significant project for us,” says ECOSERV MD Quentin Hurt. “It was certainly an interesting time in that our reports on conditions in the basin were used to formulate management positions that would lead industry to cut emissions.”

ECOSERV first stepped up to the crease in 1995 when Gerrit Coetzee, the pollution control officer at the time, appointed ECOSERV to manage a relatively small monitoring project. The region to be monitored was the industrial and residential area between Durban harbour and Amanzimtoti and a 15km belt inland. At that time, about 120 t of SO₂ was being emitted by industry each day. Today that figure has been curtailed to at about 60 t/day (see Graph).

“On average, emission rates and ground level concentrations have been halved, although in the Merebank area there has been a one third improvement,” says Quentin. “There is still a way to go but this is a significant improvement and a positive impact on residents' lives. We are also pleased that industry has taken our message seriously. But the results indicate that industries across SA need to look at emission reductions.”

The air quality monitoring project has not been an easy game for ECOSERV, often finding itself caught between disgruntled communities on the one hand and on the other, industries who felt that they were already doing more to reduce their emissions than was required of their peers nationally and abroad.

“It was a charged atmosphere,” says Quentin. “The project is now the responsibility of the Health Department, which has a team of 20 well-trained people on the project.”

Game plan

The monitoring system that ECOSERV handed over to the Health Department in September this year is a far cry from the one they inherited in 1995. “We took over a system that had been running three monitoring stations since 1993 but was not producing much information,” says Quentin.

Within two months, despite early hiccups, ECOSERV started producing reports.

“In the first year, all we were doing was ensuring the instrumentation ran. Over the years we developed the system to the point where we had six monitoring stations churning out data.”

As ECOSERV started delivering information, it became evident they had to devise a system to deal with the volume of data they were collecting. “We spent a lot of time developing a better database. This was something of a first in SA – improving the way the information was stored.”

The issue of delivering top quality data was the next major area to come under ECOSERV's scrutiny. “We were providing information and reports to decision-makers in refineries to help them determine courses of action to reduce SO₂ emissions. It was essential that the information was reliable: peoples' health and hundreds of millions of rand investment decisions were based on this data.”

The focus on data quality was followed by a focus on developing simulation models that represented the area sufficiently. A great deal of time was then spent compiling 120 monthly reports and distributing these to interested parties.

Over the years, various ECOSERV staff have managed the air monitoring project: Candy Kaiser, Torin Pfotenhauer, and Dudu Mjoli, who started assisting in 1998, ended up being the longest-running project manager.

Connel Bell and Venetia Mitchell worked on a quality assurance system which in 1999 the system received ISO17925 accreditation. “That was a landmark for us,” recalls Quentin. “Along with our Richards Bay system, Durban 's was the first system of its type to achieve that quality standard.”

In 2003, the City made a large investment in new monitoring equipment as part of the Multi Point Plan. ECOSERV project managed for 18 months before the hand-over. In the past year, ECOSERV has seen its role change to the point where it is now looking at targeted interventions. “We were pleased to be involved in the development and implementation of this expansion. We are satisfied that we have delivered results and comfortably met all the City's stringent performance requirements”, said Quentin.

"In the past we provided general recommendations - we are now more focused and are looking at modeling, assessment and proposal, such as where and how to make cuts. It will be difficult to continue to reduce emissions at the current rate. I think our future involvement be around permiting and specific interventions.”