Waste Management Bill will be tougher on polluters

In a Business Day report, Glendyr Nel, of Shepstone & Wylie, said that although environmental legislation already imposes a duty of care and remediation of environmental damage on anyone who ‘has caused or may cause significant pollution or degradation’, it has been held that this cannot be applied retrospectively. ‘Therefore, to a large extent, it is true that one man\'s contamination simply became the next owner\'s problem,’ says Nel. But she says this will not be the case any more and that land on which specified high-risk activities are taking place or have taken place, or land that is suspected of being contaminated, may be identified as ‘investigation areas’ under the proposed new legislation. Full report in Business Day