Why is the
Odisha Pollution Control Board (OPCB) favouring Hindalco by demeaning its own
existence?
In a quite
unfortunate development, the Odisha State Pollution Control Board (OPCB) has kept
on hold its order of closure of all Captive Power Plant (CPP) units of Hindalco
company at Hirakud, whose serial ash mount breach has already put the local
people and environment at risk of severe health and environmental hazard. What we could find out from media reports,
the OPCB on Friday the 24th August, has eaten up its own decision of
complete closure and has allowed the company to run two units of power
production.
This is complete
surrender to the black mailing technique of the private company.
Despite closure
order of all its power plant units, the company officials never closed all the
four units but kept on giving public statements in media that they can’t close
all the units because that is going to affect the production of the aluminium
smelter plant. As per reports available,
the company has so far closed only two out of the four units. While the OPCB officials never took action on
that, to justify the company’s profit interests, they say they have conducted
an expert enquiry into the matter now.
This expert committee, comprising of an ex-General Manager of Nalco and
a professor from IIT Kharagpur, as mentioned in media reports, have reportedly
recommended that the smelter plant should not be let closed since it will have
severe environmental impacts on the local soil and water.
We cannot accept
this report for three reasons:
1. Nalco has
been a known culprit so far as ash pond breach is concerned and it has several
times been shut down by OPCB. So, having
an ex-GM of Nalco in the expert committee is a biased act;
2. There is no
comparative assessment of damage done by the OPCB between the pollution created
by the ash pond breach and that is supposed to be created by the closure of the
smelter. Without doing this, no conclusion
can be drawn about which one is a lesser evil and hence continuing the power
plant is not justified; and
3. The so called
expert committee has given a ‘green’ signal to Hindalco’s temporary arrangement
of ash pond management while the entire closure notice was based on the breach
of ash pond and also in response to the temporary and dangerous management of
ash mounts by the company, among other things.
This hurried act
of the OPCB clearly shows that it is not acting as an institution to check
pollution but to facilitate pollution and related devastation.
We find it
laughable stuff when the OPCB says that the current order to hold the closure
notice is to check environmental hazards that may occur due to closing down of
the smelter. We question, “If there is environmental hazard of even closing
down a smelter, why was this not considered by the OPCB while giving the
closure notice earlier?”
“Further, why at
the first instance, such plants are given license to operate, which pollute
while running and even after being shut down?”, we would like to question.
We would also
like to ask the OBCB to tell us if it can guarantee that no aluminium smelter
of the state will ever be closed because they will have polluting impacts?
Further, “Why is
the board silent on the remedial measures of closing down a plant and why not
they recommend the Hindalco take such measures while shutting down the
plant?”
We are sure the
OPCB cannot guarantee this and hence are sure that the “OPCB is admitting that
it has no role to play with pollution control, rather it is there to support
private and polluting plants to run at cost of the people and environment of
the areas they operate in”.
It is time the
OPCB comes clear on its role or else shuts down because with the recent order
it has demeaned its own existence.
If in reality
the institution was concerned about abating pollution, it would have conducted
a thorough enquiry about the several ecological dangers of the fly ash mount’s
breach on local people, crop fields and water bodies rather than rushing for an
expert committee visit to justify the plant’s smelter to operate.
If you have
teeth, show it. Close the power
plants. Hindalco’s loss is not your
concern. You are there to check
pollution, not to take political decisions.
Immediately
conduct an open and independent inquiry into the pollution and radiation
impacts of the ash pond breach and ban the temporary ash mount arrangements of
the company and stop its power plants from operating and polluting further.
The OPCB will be
held responsible if there is any further breach in the ash mount and related
environmental damage done to the crop fields, soil, water bodies and other
species due to its recent order.
For further
details, please contact:
Ranjan Panda
Convenor, Water
Initiatives Odisha (WIO)
Cell:
94370-50103
===========
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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