WILLEMSTAD - Despite all good intentions, the Rhuggenaath government also wants to give way to the new operator of the refinery, Corc BV, to ignore the environmental standards for sulfur dioxide and particulate matter. In fact, the government is awaiting the judge's ruling today whether it wants to set environmental standards at all, let alone enforce them. It leaves that to the judge. The world upside down.
"Transparency" was the big word used by the prime minister when he moved in Fortí in 2017 to form a "neat" government again with MAN and PIN.
Little of this can be detected regarding the Isla refinery. In fact, Rhuggenaath has appealed a verdict that wanted to give his own outspoken policy a boost. The question is therefore justified as to whether his government values the environment as highly as expressed at the beginning of his term? Does Rhuggenaath want to do what all his predecessors have left behind?
To make it clear that this government does not intend to put Corc, for example, in the way, we cite Judge Thomas Veling, who gave the Rhuggenaath government a slap on the wrist in 2019 and against which Rhuggenaath subsequently appealed.
August verdict
In the so-called August judgment, the Court finds that the government is acting unlawfully by failing to establish a proper system of standards for the island. The Rhuggenaath government has also failed to take effective measures to protect its own citizens against health risks and has also failed to inform or warn the residents of Curaçao about air pollution and its risks.
In his consideration, judge Veling makes it clear that the government has seriously defaulted. For example, it has not been shown whether and, if so, which standards for air quality apply in Curaçao. Although standards apply for Isla and later RdK (the first successor to PdVSA) and CRU from 1997 (of 80 μg / m3 sulfur dioxide (S02) and 75 μg / m3 particulate matter (PMl 0)), the court says that these standards in no way reflect what is considered to be the maximum internationally acceptable, and this has been the case for a long time.
The refinery is at a standstill, but the court finds that there is still an undiminished interest in the claim for clean air in Curaçao. He says: "After all, it must be assumed that the decrease in current pollution is not the result of active government intervention to improve air quality, but of external factors that are independent of it."
It has now been established - and the court also takes this into account in its judgment - that RdK will continue the exploitation by another party and so the threat of the unlawful acts by the government continues unabated.
CORC
The government wonders on appeal: why is this threat still present? But Corc, the intended successor of operator PdVSA, makes no bone about this in a press release this week:
CORC is committed to gradually improving environmental conditions until the best international standards are achieved and to ensuring the long-term sustainability of its refinery operations.
That seems nice, but the judge expressly states in his judgment that Curaçao is obliged from 1 September 2020 to bring the amount of sulfur dioxide and particulate matter into line with the WHO standards (or other alternative and properly published standards) that test against the European The Convention on Human Rights.
So the judge does not give Prime Minister Ruggenaath gradually, but one year to comply with the sentence in his judgment. The court says it will not attach a penalty to the judgment, "now that it can be assumed that his government will comply with the judgment even without such an incentive."
And that is still the question. Rhuggenaath has appealed with the help of his retainer law firm FCW-legal. He therefore does not want to meet the requirement to develop a proper system of standards at all. In fact, the government has just copied the old standard of the Isla in a ministerial order with General Effect. A standard that has therefore been razed to the ground by Judge Veling. The stimulus he is talking about apparently works slightly differently ...
Appeal
What the motives are for the government and what course will be set with CORC can be read in the plea of FCW-legal, which is litigating for Rhuggenaath.
The government is of the opinion that Curaçao cannot be legally obliged to reduce sulfur dioxide and particulate matter emissions within a short period of time and to a significant extent. Because, it is argued: "the environmental movement has never been able to convincingly demonstrate that the pollution of the Isla and the BOO pose a real immediate threat to the lives of the residents downwind of the Schottegat."
Rhuggenaath's lawyer also argues that the one-year period to deal with the emissions - as the judge ruled - is not realistic. That should have happened before September 1, 2020. And you guessed it: nothing has happened in January 2021.
Moreover, the government of Curaçao is of the opinion that it may itself determine who should bear the heavy environmental burden downwind of the Schottegat and whose violation of fundamental rights should only be accepted for the benefit of the public interest, according to the FCW’s plea.
The same government says in the same pleading paper that the small scale of Curaçao and the poverty in terms of finances stand in the way of taking environmental measures. Surely you cannot expect that from this government, despite the fine words in the 2017 coalition agreement.
The first judge said this about it:
"That in itself is precisely the small scale of Curaçao society (and the impoverishment of the government) can have consequences for what can reasonably be expected of the government. But it is not the case that this single circumstance means that the government does not have to do anything.
Because that has been the adage of every government since 2002, when the first revision of the licensing standards should have taken place and what Eugene Rhuggenaath proudly recalled in 2017 when he won the election with his PAR: I am for a clean environment!
With these fine words, I would be on the safe side and as an environmental movement attach a penalty to the demand.