April 09, 2008
Incinerator operator faces criminal litigation
Sunil Raghu, Livemint, April 9th, 2008
Report says Beil stored much higher quantity of waste than permitted, ignored notice on its safety standards
Ankleshwar, Gujarat: Initial investigations into a fire at an inflammable toxic waste treatment plant in Ankleshwar, Gujarat, show that the facility’s operator had ignored notices and warnings issued a month earlier by state authorities. The district collector of Bharuch, where Ankleshwar is located, has decided to initiate criminal procedings against company officials.
A three-member committee, comprising an official of the Gujarat Pollution Control Board, or GPCB, a sub-judicial magistrate and a factory inspector, set up immediately after the 3 April fire, has said in its report that it found irregularities at the facility run by Bharuch Enviro Infrastructure Ltd, or Beil.
“The report has clear findings that Beil stored hazardous waste in much higher quantity (than permitted), dumped hazardous waste in a haphazard manner and did not have adequate fire or safety equipment to deal with such a situation,” said GPCB official V.R. Ghatge, who was part of the three-member panel.
GPCB and the factory inspector had in March issued a notice to Beil on its safety standards and high inventory. “It does not appear to have made any difference to Beil,” Ghatge said.
According to the GPCB official, the capacity allowed for Beil was 2.5 tonnes per hour and the firm could keep an inventory of 90 days. This means Beil could store solid toxic waste of up to 5,400 tonnes. Instead, it had kept 12,000 tonnes of solid toxic waste.
Bharuch district collector Arti Kanwar said local authorities would not take any “knee-jerk” action against the facility although they plan to initiate criminal litigation against company officials.
“The criminal proceedings will not be under the Indian Penal Code but under the Factories Act and Environment Protection Act. The provisions under these Acts involve imprisonment of up to five years and fine of up to Rs1 lakh. We are planning some more measures and will file more cases against the company in the near future,” she said.
Beil director Ashok Panjwani said he has not received any notice from the government but “we are prepared to answer any legal questions.” The firm has set up a five-member team to study reasons for the fire and steps it should take to ensure safety. “We will follow the instructions given by the government and try to change accordingly,” Panjwani said.
Regarding the immediate impact of the fire on the lives of people in the area, the collector said authorities had not found any unwarranted traces of toxicity in the region so far.
“We have monitored the area for air pollution or health hazards post fire. We did a door-to-door survey...in the villages surrounding the site and have not found any impact. We would periodically continue to monitor the situation,” Kanwar said.
Pradip Thaker, regional secretary of not-for-profit organization Human Welfare, Environment and Safety Association, or HWESA, disagreed. “An incinerator involves burning the toxic waste at a temperature of 1,200 degrees centigrade (Celsius) for safety. The fire reached a level of 400 degrees centigrade only. So, there is bound to be some toxic waste and heavy chemicals that would have gone into the air and it needs to be studied in detail.”
Thaker said that it rained within 24 hours of the fire and toxic particles might have settled on the farms in the vicinity. Moreover, over 150 water tankers were deployed to douse the fire. “The water was poured on the toxic substance. It has surely gone underground and needs to be looked at,” he said.
HWESA has been campaigning in the area against bringing solid waste from the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal for incineration to Beil. “They cannot handle solid waste from the (local) industry. Imagine if something of this sort happened while handling Bhopal waste.”
The area, consisting of three main industrial clusters of Ankleshwar, Jhagadia and Panoli, houses over 700 industrial units that produce pharmaceuticals and chemicals for varied use across the globe.
At the industrial town of 200,000 citizens, nothing seemed to have changed. “There was too much excitement on the night of fire and a lot of worry about safety, but now it is business as usual,” said Ramnikbhai Kapadia, a shopkeeper on station road, adjacent to Gujarat Industrial Development Corp.’s industrial estate that houses a large number of chemical units.
But there are others, such as Ranjitbhai, who said they were lucky because of “favourable” winds. “The storage site of Beil was apparently holding more than 11,000 drums of toxic waste and the fire happened only in one of the sheds. As the wind direction was away from storage site and towards empty farms, a bigger disaster was averted,” he said, adding that the city may not be so lucky next time.
Kanwar said the government was not immediately looking at closing down the facility. “If we ask for closure, we would be encouraging industrial units to dump toxic waste (indiscriminately). We do not want that.”
It is illegal for industries to store more than 10 tonnes of toxic waste. They have to send the excess for incineration.
“I could not tell the industry that I would not take their waste and so I took it. I had kept concerned authorities informed of this situation,” Panjwani said. He also said that closing the incinerator was not a solution and neither was his company thinking about it. “It is not like closing an industrial unit. If I close down, there is no similar facility in the region. More than 500 units would therefore forced to close down. A fire is not the end of the world. We just need to learn from it for the future.”
Kamlesh Udani, director of J.B. Pharmaceuticals Ltd, which has a bulk drug unit in the area, said the incinerator must continue to operate. “There are some big companies in the area that have small incinerators but small units are completely dependent on this incinerator. You now need to ensure that safety is observed more strictly,” he said.
Posted by tim at 04:01 PM | Comments (0)
April 08, 2008
Fire spurs call against Bhopal waste burial
Business Standard, April 8th, 2008
A massive fire that consumed 120 tonne of unknown toxic wastes at Bharuch Environ Infrastructure's (BEIL) toxic waste treatment and storage facility in Ankleshwar, Gujarat on April 3 has triggered calls from the survivors of the Bhopal Union Carbide gas disaster of 1980 against dumping the carbide waste anywhere in India.
Of the 8,000 tonne of waste which lay buried in the carbide site in Bhopal, 345 tonne of toxic waste was to be removed to Ankleshwar for incineration as per Madhya Pradesh High Court orders.
P M Bhargava – a member of the High Court appointed technical committee - who had advised the Madhya Pradesh High Court against sending Union Carbide's waste from Bhopal for incineration at this facility today said that the fire underlined the gist of their warnings against dumping carbide waste in Ankleshwar or anywhere in India.
The technical committee has in fact recommended disposal of the waste in the US which has facilities for destroying the toxins of the carbide plant.
Rohit Prajapati of Gujarat-based Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti said at a press conference: "The fire disaster in Ankleshwar was handled very poorly. Till date no information has been made available to the public regarding what was burnt in the fire, what is stored on site, and what to do in the event of a disaster."
According to Prajapati, this is both against the law and counter to the lessons learnt from the Bhopal disaster. Prajapati was part of a 4-person civil society team that visited Ankleshwar to ascertain the situation after the fire disaster.
The Environmental Protection Act and the Factories Act mandate disclosure of information relating to hazards posed by chemicals to workers and public. However, Gujarat Pollution Control Board refused to divulge this information even under Right to Information, Prajapati said.
The pollution was so intense that three villages were to be evacuated according to early news reports. However, no evacuation happened as the District Administration neither had an evacuation plan nor a disaster management plan.
Posted by tim at 04:49 PM | Comments (0)
Bhopal-like disaster averted in Gujarat, claims NGO
New Delhi, Apr 8: A Bhopal gas tragedy-like disaster was averted in Gujarat's Ankeleshwar earlier this month, an NGO claimed today.
Gujarat-based Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti said here that a fire consumed 120 tonnes of unknown toxic waste on April three at Bharuch Environ Infrastructure Ltd (BEIL's) toxic waste storage and disposal facility in Ankeleshwar. ''The incident vindicates the stance of local residents, Bhopal survivors and a member of the High Court appointed Technical Committee who had advised the Madhya Pradesh High Court against sending Union Carbide's waste from Bhopal for incineration at the BEIL facility,'' said Samiti's Rohit Prajapati.
The Samiti members sat on a dharna at Jantar Matar here with Bhopal survivors who have just completed a padyatra to the National Capital.
He alleged that while the Environmental Protection Act and the Factories Protection Act mandates disclosure of information relating to hazards posed by chemicals to workers ad residents, the Gujarat Poccution Control Board refused to divulge the information on the type of toxic which caught fire in the incident under the Right to Information Act.
A Task Force set up by the Madhya Pradesh HC to recommend action on toxic waste lyinging and around the Union Carbide factory site in Bhopal concuded that 345 tonne of chlorinated wastes should be sent to BEIL for incineration. ''But according to Dr P M Bhargava, a prominent scientist and member of the Technical Committee appointed by the HC, the Task Force had omitted parts of the Technical Sub-committee report that strongly suggested that the waste be shipped back to Dow Chemicals for disposal in the United States,'' claimed Prajapati.
He also charged the Narendra Modi government in Gujarat with not taking steps to avoid the transfer of the Union Carbide chemicals to BEIL as it was concerned about the capital investment promised by Dow Chemicals in the state.
The district administration in Ankeleshwar had no contingency plans to tackle such incidents, he claimed.
Prajapati also quoted a study by a German consultant which found that the BEIL facility was not equipped to deal with highly toxic wastes.
Posted by tim at 02:01 PM | Comments (0)
April 07, 2008
'State-of-the-art' Gujarat incinerator chosen for disposal of Bhopal's waste goes up in flames
"The protests are more emotional than technical." So said Ashok Panjwani, director of Bharuch Enviro Infrastructure Limited (BEIL), when the German remediation company GTZ questioned the ability of BEIL to safely handle the 345 tonnes of toxic waste from Bhopal slated to be incinerated there.
S P Gautam, chairman of notorious public body the Madhya Pradesh Pollution Control Board (MPPCB), later took up the attack on the rationality of survivors' organisations: "The incinerator is of international standards and one of the best in the country, regardless of what NGO's say".
Months later still, the Gujarat government itself placed doubts on BEIL's competence when, contrary to claims by the Madhya Pradesh authorities, it denied permission for the wastes to be sent to BEIL in Ankleshwar.
On April 4th, the question was settled once and for all. Materials recklessly stored for incineration at BEIL caught light resulting in, technically speaking, a massive toxic inferno.
Now, at last, MP authorities should recognise that the only possible destination for Dow's toxic wastes is the home of the finest international disposal standards, namely, the seat of Dow's business - the USA. Ed.
Devastating Indian Chemical Fire Under Control
After nine hours, firefighters finally brought a devastating fire under control in western India. The fire broke out at a chemical factory in India's western Gujarat Province.
The fire was on the property of the Bharuch Enviro Infrastructure factory. The cause of the fire is still unknown.
BEIL: meeting their own 'international standards'
Divisional Fire Officer R. M. Gamit told reporters, "The chemical waste from the factory was kept in a storage warehouse for disposal … We are still trying to ascertain the reasons behind the outbreak of the fire."
Authorities put three villages in the vicinity on high alert. Disaster management officials have also installed devices in the surrounding area to measure damage to the environment. No casualties have been reported so far.
Divisional Fire Officer R. M. Gamit said the cause of the fire is not yet known. (NTDTV)"That fire is now under control," said District Magistrate Anita Kanwar. "We had taken precautions regarding emissions from the fire in the surrounding villages. However, we did not need to evacuate any village. We had kept medical teams there on standby and they will continue to be there to keep the locals under observation."
The huge fire at BEIL
Fire safety laws are lax in India. Many factories in congested urban areas allegedly handle hazardous material carelessly.
Posted by tim at 04:09 PM | Comments (0)