‘Class action’ mooted against Ugu
After the salty water crisis, ‘Legal Eagle‘ looks at whether litigation against the district municipality would pass Constitutional muster.
A LOCAL legal expert has called on the South Coast community to stand together and tell the Ugu District Municipality: “You have been served!”
The expert, who wanted to be known as ‘Legal Eagle‘, was referring to the recent five days of dangerously high salinity levels in the Ugu drinking water.
He felt this could warrant a ‘class action’ suit against the municipality and said it would pass Constitutional muster.
A ‘class action’ suit is a civil case involving a number of litigants with a common action against a particular body, organisation or municipality.
They are common in America, but rare in South Africa.
“All we have to do as affected citizens is to prove negligence on the part of the powers that be,” he said.
He pointed out that Ugu was entrusted with the task of looking after our natural resources and, therefore, of providing us with clean, drinkable water.
However, litigants would have to prove they had suffered damages. An expert would need to attest to the fact that consuming water at the salinity levels reached could affect their health in the short, middle and long term.
“To quantify those damages is the rider. However, damage to our home appliances and sewage systems would not be difficult to quantify,” he said.
He said the Constitution gave citizens ‘locus standi’ – the right to be heard in court.
Secondly, the Constitution gave everyone the right to sufficient water.
“One of the synonyms for the word, sufficient, was satisfactory,” he pointed out. He also referred to environmental rights section of the Constitution.
This section makes it clear that we have a right to an environment that is not harmful to our health or well-being and that we are protected from pollution of the air, water, food or soil.
Legal Eagle looked at defences the municipality could raise, one of them being that the salty water was an act of God, caused by the drought and the fact that there was inadequate flow in the river to breach the mouth.
However, this could be refuted as the municipality had turned down an offer to have the river mouth dredged free of charge. He added that ratepayers were now paying to have this done. The municipality could not claim ignorance regarding its natural resources, either. Legal Eagle said any authority was constitutionally obliged to know how to care for these.
While litigation could be extremely expensive, Legal Eagle said that the cost of failing to make a stand could be immeasurable to generations to come.
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