Tina Costas
Director
Tina Costas is a specialist environmental lawyer based in Durban. She specializes in environmental, planning, occupational health and safety law, renewable energy and climate change.
Tina has extensive experience in investigating and assessing environmental impacts, liabilities and compliance in both national and international companies covering a wide scope of sectors including mining (gold, ferrochrome, platinum, coal), water, chemical and energy, land, manufacturing and forestry.
She has acted for major industries in both contentious and non contentious matters in South Africa.
She has specific experience in wetlands, water pollution, environmental impact assessments, environmental issues within the context of mining (water, waste, regulatory issues), air emissions, waste and contaminated land.
Tina holds the degrees of B.Sc (Hons); LLB; LLM (Environmental Law). She was admitted as an attorney in March 2003 and joined the practice as a director in June 2011 in the commercial department.
She is also a lead auditor (ISO14001) and has managed and conducted various audits (including environmental, environmental legal compliance, environmental due diligence and ISO 14001 audits) on companies within various sectors of the industry.
Selected client work
Examples of environmental matters which she has advised on are set out below:
- She is currently involved in advising members of the printing industry in South Africa in respect of the Department of Environmental Affairs’ intention to include printing as a listed activity in terms of the National Environmental Management: Air Quality Act, 2004. As listing will have major financial and economic consequences for the printing industry, the matter involves engaging with technical experts to assess the draft standards and undertake a number of investigations in relation to emissions and in particular volatile organic compounds. The matter involves a detailed investigation into the printing industry’s operations and specifically emissions resulting from the operations. It includes assessing whether the industry has an impact on ambient air quality levels using recognized Air Dispersion Modelling methods. A key element has been engaging with the Department of Environmental Affairs in relation to time limits and the proposed implementation of the draft standard.
- Advising on a number of renewable energy projects in respect of wind and solar projects in South Africa and specifically advising on regulatory and licensing issues in respect of environmental issues including heritage, biodiversity, environmental impacts assessments, water, waste and planning.
- Advising and preparing reports for a number of companies in respect of contaminated land issues.
- Advising companies on corporate governance and impact of health, safety and environmental issues.
Memberships and activities
- Member of the Environmental Law Association
- Member of the International Association for Impact Assessment