Pollution Control Board is playing with community
health and water sources
A team of Water
Initiatives Odisha(WIO) consisting of its Convenor Ranjan Panda and renowned
environmental lawyer Bibhu Prasad Tripathy along with other members made a
visit today to the affected areas by the breach of Hindalco company’s ash
pond. To their utter dismay, they found
out that the Odisha State Pollution Control Board (OPCB), despite knowing the
gravity of the problem chose to remain silent until the ash pond breached and
caused severe damage to crop fields amounting to about 50 acres directly and at
least 10 thousand acres by polluting the canal of the Sambalpur
distributary. The team found out that it
is in fact the OPCB which has facilitated the disaster and still continues to
remain silent as the company is found to be doing knee jerk patch up
works. The team found out that the
company is just doing an eye wash through patch work and there is every
possibility that the faulty ash pond is going to breach in near future again.
“If the Odisha
Pollution Control Board is really serious about controlling pollution, it
should have found out the faults in the ash pond design during regular
monitoring. Such huge breaches don't happen accidentally. So, the recent
breaches are not accident but deliberate ones happening with supports from the
pollution control boad officials,” found out the team.
Fly ash from
coal fired power contains several toxic elements. They are: arsenic, beryllium, boron, cadmium,
chromium, chromium VI, cobalt, lead, manganese, mercury, molybdenum, selenium,
strontium, thallium, and vanadium, along with dioxins and PAH compounds. These
tox elements now have been released to local water sources and farms. There are
no studies to find out their exact amounts. So, such breaches have serious
health issues for the local communities.
World-wide there have been evidences of thousands of people getting
critical health problems due to pollution from coal-fired power plants.
Just giving away
compensation to people for spilling of fly ash into farm land is not
enough. The company must be held
accountable for the toxicity it has spread to soil, water, human and
livestocks. It is an environmental crime.
Fly ash has
severe radiation impacts and the National Green Tribunal has already ordered
the government to consider these impacts while permitting any thermal power
plant. However, the state government has
turned a deaf ear to this. The
government must immediately do a thorough analysis of radioactive impact of
Hindalco’s ash pond breach in the soil and water of the locality and charge the
company with severe punishment.
The Odisha State
Pollution Control Board ordered closure of the Hindalco power plant on 18th
August. But the company is yet to act on it. Sources point out that out of the
367.5 MW of captive power that is being generated burning coal for the plant,
it has only shut down the unit generating 67.5 MW. This is too little and too
late.
The recent ash
pond breaches point out to a larger policy issue in the state. Almost all the power plants in the state are
getting permission to run on the basis of undervalued calculation of land
requirement. In reality almost all of them need more land for disposing off the
fly ash. However, to get clearance
easily they give an undervalued account of land requirement. That’s the reason each power plant of the
state is encroaching upon common spaces as well as private land to dispose
their ash dumps illegally and in environmentally hazardous manner. Lack of any clear cut policy in the state
that takes into account the site specific as well as cumulative impact of fly
ash pollution makes it easier for the power plants to flout environmental
laws. The state government has been
urged upon to immediately come up with a clear cut policy on this issue in
discussion with the people and experts.
Without this such cases will keep repeating and the environmental
criminals will keep running scot free.
For further
details, please contact:
Ranjan Panda
Convenor, Water
Initiatives Odisha (WIO)
Cell:
94370-50103
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Water
Initiatives Odisha (WIO) is a state
level coalition of civil society organisations, farmers, academia, media and
other concerned, which has been working on water, environment and climate
change issues in the state for more than two decades now.
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