The City of Cape Town is calling on residents to comment on the proposal to exclude certain development related activities in the Atlantis Urban Area from the requirement to apply for environmental authorisation.
The City has prioritised Atlantis as a key industrial node where the focus is on revitalisation initiatives that will facilitate job creation, enable smart green economic growth, and attract foreign direct investment and domestic investment to the area.
Some of these initiatives include the Atlantis Greentech Special Economic Zone, established in October 2018, and the Atlantis Special Economic Zone (SEZ), established in December 2019.
The whole of Atlantis, including the SEZ, is located within an area with remnant critically endangered and endangered vegetation. The remnants vary in condition from low to high quality and have not been selected for national conservation targets. The City has been proactively purchasing conservation worthy land in an area neighbouring Atlantis to mitigate the loss of the said vegetation in the Atlantis Industrial Area and the area within the Atlantis Urban Edge.
Thus, in order to facilitate ongoing development in Atlantis, the City has created the Atlantis Conservation Land Bank. This is the acquiring and managing of important biodiversity land (classified as Critical Biodiversity Area – CBA) outside of the urban edge, within a landscape conservation initiative known as the Dassenberg Coastal Catchment Partnership, to replace the loss of critically endangered vegetation within the urban edge.
The majority of vacant sites in the Atlantis Urban Area contain remnants of critically endangered Atlantis Fynbos or endangered Cape Flats Dune Strandveld and the removal of this vegetation type requires environmental authorisation. Thus, several activities require Environmental Impact Assessments and approval before construction can take place in the Atlantis Urban Area, be it residential developments, light industrial developments, or the construction of warehouses, and mixed use offices.
As such, the City has, with the assistance and support of the National Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, developed a Generic Environmental Management Programme for Development Projects within the Atlantis Urban Area (Generic EMPr) that proposes that certain activities be excluded from environmental authorisation, namely:
the removal of indigenous vegetation;
the development of portions of land still zoned as agriculture within the urban area, or zoned public open space;
the development and expansion of bulk infrastructure such as roads, water, reservoirs, stormwater, electricity transmission and distribution; and
the development and operation of facilities for the storage and handling of dangerous goods.
The above exclusions will only apply to developments within the Atlantis Urban Area. Other statutory controls will remain in place, such as those ensuring that dangerous goods are secured and stored safely.
The primary benefit of the Generic EMPr is that development in Atlantis will be facilitated through the removal of the requirement for environmental authorisation for the identified excluded listed activities provided that the developer is not undertaking another listed activity that has not been excluded. Instead, a developer will need to meet the requirements of the registration process as stated in the Generic EMPr. If the development still includes undertaking a listed activity that has not been excluded from the requirement to be authorised, then the developer will still need to undertake a Basic Assessment or Scoping or Environmental Impact Assessment process, depending on which listed activity triggers the authorisation requirement.
Given that Atlantis is a key development focus area for the City, the benefits should be significant in terms of cost and time savings. Environmental authorisation processes can take from eight to 24 months, or sometimes longer in complex cases.
The proposed Generic Environmental Management Programme to be used as an instrument to exclude the above activities from the need for environmental authorisation prior to commencement, has been published in the Government Gazette. The proposed exclusion will apply in terms of a Schedule to the National Environmental Management Act, as such the notice has been published by the National Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment.
Source: City of Cape Town