Environmentalists and community members on Wednesday night again fired questions at EnviroServ about the company’s contentious Shongweni landfill in the first monitoring committee meeting that has run successfully since September last year.

Wednesday’s gathering saw the company’s chief executive, Dean Thompson, and experts present the company’s toxicology report, air quality report and audit report.

EnviroServ has come under intense scrutiny as communities near and around the landfill have complained since November 2015 about “toxic fumes” from the site that they believe are making them sick.

The company has said that a drop in pH levels at the site – sanctioned by the department of environmental affairs – led to fostering of a sulfur-reducing bacteria that contributed to the malodour in the area.

After a presentation on the status on the landfill by EnviroServ’s operations director, Nico Vermeulen, environmentalist Rico Euripidou said that he objected to the view presented that all stakeholders were in full agreement with and understood the terms of reference used in the reports and the reports themselves.

“It’s almost as if you are pre-determining the outcome of your toxicological reports,” said Euripidou.

“When you talk about monitoring, you don’t talk about what kind of parameters you were monitoring for, you don’t talk about where those machines are located or whether or not the location of those machines was done in partnership with community people,” said Euripidou.

There were many questions that the company had yet to answer, despite being asked repeatedly, according to Euripidou.

“You don’t talk about the volumes of leachate that are being generated every week, every month, or the constituency of the leachate. You don’t talk about waybills, what kind of waste has been historically dumped at the site and what has changed?”

Toxicological monitoring needed to be done in partnership with the affected communities, he said. “They need to agree that we are going to visit their doctors and hospitals in the area and talk to them. You also need to talk to individual people who are affected.”

Other residents accused the company of not allowing adequate time frames for engagement and not following up on promises made to communities, including that minutes of meetings and engagement on terms of references for the already published reports would be supplied to residents living in the rural areas in isiZulu. The company had also promised to facilitate a workshop amongst isiZulu speakers, and had not, residents charged.

In his report, Vermeulen said that various remedial actions were still in place at the site. Brine and leachate were being transported to an EnviroServ site in Gauteng, chemical treatments were taking place and the company was looking for alternatives to dispose of storm water off-site. Trenching and micro encapsulation were being done during heavy rainstorms, he added.

“A gas extraction and treatment system plan has been submitted to the department of environmental affairs for approval and trials of a pilot scrubbing system and biological scrubber would be on site in two weeks,” he said.

A pilot flare system was also expected to start soon, he said.

Although there had been an improvement in the pH of the site, there had also been a spike in hydrogen sulphide levels. According to Vermeulen, this was to be expected as the company was no longer allowed to receive additional waste.

EnviroServ is in the midst of a criminal case relating to its operations at the landfill. It is also currently appealing the department of environmental affairs’ “premature” decision to suspend operations at the landfill with the minister of environmental affairs.