The city has been earmarked as one of two locations for a smelter required to convert heavy minerals mined in Pondoland into titanium and ilmenite.

If the Australian mining company, Minerals Commodities Limited (MRC), through its South African subsidiary Transworld Energy and Minerals Resources (TEM), is granted mining rights later this year, the smelter will be located either in Coega, 680km away from the Xolobeni Mineral Sands Project, or here, 410km away.

The Buffalo City municipality does not have a "clean air" policy in place to regulate the air pollution the smelter is expected to produce.

"If the smelter were to come here, we would put in policies to regulate the level of pollution to protect the people," said Buffalo City spokesperson Darby Gounden yesterday.

The city is governed by national acts pertaining to air pollution, but Gounden said the municipality was looking at implementing a municipal bylaw tailoring the national policy to local conditions. An air pollution officer was recently appointed.

"When companies come in they will be regulated so there is no detrimental effect to the environment," Gounden said.

Local environmental consultant Alan Carter said that if the smelter was located in East London, "modern processes" would go a long way to reducing air and water pollution in the immediate surrounds.

"There are ways of treating these things," said Carter, including using filters on smoke stacks and applying on-site waste water treatment.

In terms of tailing dams, where waste from the mining process is dumped, Carter said rehabilitation depended on what environmental excavations were made to alter the landscape to begin with.

"There are ways of rehabilitating the land even though it may take a long time," said Carter.