Some of the drums are leaking. The Department of water Affairs' spokesman in Pretoria, Henry Abbot, said yesterday that the clean-up of hazardous waste was the biggest the department had tackled. The clean-up is likely to cost the taxpayer between R5 million and R9m.
Sources say the owner has skipped the country.
The news of the problem at Algoa Recycling came as the City of Cape Town announced yesterday that it was drawing up new legislation to regulate the movement of hazardous waste from regions outside the city's boundaries. Mayor Peter Marais said in a statement that the city had begun drafting by-laws in an attempt to regulate the movement of hazardous waste. Some of the Algoa Recycling waste is to be tested to determine its composition. Where it is not possible or too expensive to determine the chemical composition, particularly with some of the drums where chemicals have been mixed, the waste is to be 'entombed' in drums embedded in concrete. This method is used for highly toxic chemicals like cyanide, arsenic, mercury and transformer oil.