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September 30, 2005

Solar em-powered

BY VINUTA GOPAL

One year ago, the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal launched Project Chirag in collaboration with and for the benefit of youngsters orphaned by the deadly gas leak of 1984. These youngsters, who had come together to fight for justice for Bhopal, under the banner Bhopal ki Aawaaz, were struggling to make ends meet and were forsaken in this quest for self sustainance by both the State as well as the [1]Corporation that took their parents' lives and their health. Here is an account of the successful journey that 4 youngsters, Shahid, Suman, Sadanand and Pramod embarked on, last September, a journey to financial stability and empowerment.

It all began with Solar Generation, a youth campaign for clean energy, launched by Greenpeace India, providing 30 photovoltaic solar panels and lanterns and the requisite training to the members of Chirag.The lanterns were to be charged during the day and rented out at night to pushcart vendors, replacing the petromax and lead-acid battery lanterns that the vendors normally used.

Shahid Noor, the driving force behind this business, has worked hard to keep the lanterns in good condition and now is convinced that he can assemble one himself if only he got his hands on the circuit! Suman, the mother of two toddlers is the anchor of Chirag. She keeps track of the daily collections, maintains the bills and accounts and ensures that the lamp register is kept up to date, and is enthusiastically supported by her husband. Sadanand and Pramod are the foot soldiers, they’ve had their doubts about whether this would be worth the effort but are now finally convinced that this project could go places if worked on.

A year later as we sit down to take stock in their very own office, there is an air of accomplishment and an acknowledgement that Chirag has immense possibilities. They’ve earned over sixty-one thousand rupees in this first year of operations, expanded to 40 lanterns (thanks to the support from AID – Alternative India Development) and are rearing to get bigger! The office sports a new look too. From a brass tack effort of brick and mortar, its now been plastered, recently painted and even sports a cupboard, a table for their accountant and shelves for the lanterns. Its clearly a space they cherish and take pride in.

Shahid proudly announces at the meeting that there are no gas lamps any more in the Chhola Naka area – all of them now use Chirag’s solar powered lights! He also adds that the thela wallahs (pushcart vendors) are finally beginning to believe that these are lights powered by the sun; "they’ve seen the panels on our roof and want to know if it could be used in their homes too…. Do you think there is another business possibility there?" You can almost see his mind ticking away and working out the feasibility of a new proposal.

Suman pipes up and says that they should add more lanterns to the business quickly, "We are already turning people down everyday, if we add lanterns we can include more people in Chirag and help them out too." The Chirag team are now not only confident that they can deal with any problems that come up in the course of their daily work, but are even looking at how to get better at what they do. It’s made a significant difference to their lives too. Like Shahid says, "Ab ghar ka kharchha ke liye to paisa to pukka hai." (At least there is certainty of enough money to pay for the running of the house).

The solar powered lanterns have lit up more than pushcarts in the night bazaar in Bhopal - they have ignited a project called Chirag!

Posted by bhola at 11:01 AM | Comments (0)

September 23, 2005

Indian Supreme Court stays proceedings against Dominique Lapierre

New Delhi:
The Supreme Court on Friday stayed criminal proceedings brought by Madhya Pradesh Director General of Police Swaraj Puri against French author Dominique Lapierre and his publisher Shekhar Malhotra.

The defamation charges relate to Lapierre's book "It was Five Past Midnight in Bhopal", about the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster.

A Supreme Court bench of Justices K.G. Balakrishnan and P.P. Naolekar issued notice to Puri and Javier Moro of a petition from Lapierre and Malhotra seeking transfer of the complaint outside Madhya Pradesh.

In the transfer petition, the French author said that Puri held a powerful position in the state, through which he could influence witnesses. It would not be possible to have a just and fair trial. In the interest of justice the complaint should be transferred to a competent court outside Madhya Pradesh.

Puri has filed a criminal complaint alleging libel against the French author and Malhotra in a Jabalpur court. The case was due to begin on September 26.

Puri claims that Lapierre had given a distorted account of the December 1984 industrial disaster, which killed thousands and left hundreds of thousands affected by poison gases that leaked from the Union Carbide factory. Lapierre did not correctly depict the role of the police, says Puri, who has also filed a civil complaint seeking compensation of $20 million and is seeking an order restraining the publishers from printing, selling and circulating the book.

The Jabalpur court has issued notices to the author and publisher on this petition.

BUY "IT WAS FIVE TO MIDNIGHT IN BHOPAL" HERE.

Posted by bhola at 11:17 PM | Comments (0)

September 20, 2005

An enemy of the people: Diane Wilson took on some big polluters by herself, and paid a price in her small Texas town

Review by Barbara Davenport, San Diego Union-Tribune, September 18, 2005

Get in.
Sit down.
Shut up.
Hang on.

You're aboard with Diane Wilson, East Texas shrimper and self-described unreasonable woman as she takes on the Texas chemico-political complex in her fight to save Lavaca Bay, the stretch of Gulf Coast where her family has lived for five generations.

She's alarmed about the four-foot diameter pipe that dumps a daily avalanche of polychlorinated biphenyls and other known carcinogens into the bay, and outraged that the EPA – yes, that's your federal-tax-dollar EPA – has granted Formosa Chemical permission to do it. She's a woman in a place where women aren't listened to, a high school graduate in jeans lining up against high-priced lawyers in $2000 suits, and the lone voice in a port town where the other shrimpers and fishermen wish she'd shut up and go home.

We meet her out on the bay in pitch dark, with a storm rising. She's dropped her nets, and then discovers that her boat is taking water fast; the deck's about six inches above the waves. Water rushes into the hull through two valves that have been twisted open, and the bilge pump isn't running because its wires have been yanked. Wilson dives in the diesel-soaked bilge to find the 5-pound pipe wrench to close the valves, dives again to look for the wires, and in the blackness of the pitching hull she hooks up the pump.

She tells herself she must be getting somewhere. If she were as insignificant and wrongheaded as the chemical company guys kept telling her she was, they wouldn't be working this hard to kill her.

"An Unreasonable Woman" is a page-turning account of Wilson's years-long fight to force Union Carbide, Alcoa and Formosa Chemical to tell the truth to the people whose air and water they were poisoning, and to force state and federal regulators to enforce their own laws. It starts when the local paper reports that Texas ranks No. 1 in the country for levels of every toxic chemical released into the environment, and Calhoun County, pop. 15,000, on the Gulf of Mexico, where she lives, accounts for 54 percent of the state's emissions.

She writes in a highly personal, uneven style, peppered with usages like "the palms of his hands looked hard as supper plates against his worn jeans," and "when he looked up from his shoes, he pranced like a preacher in a tent, who had the only exit." Her telling is so much about her own experience that she neglects ever to say what year it is, when events took place, or over what span of time. A reference to Governor Ann Richards locates us in the early 1990s, but Wilson offers no dates or timelines.

These omissions do not detract from the book's power. It's high drama, conflict between a woman with old-fashioned notions about integrity, and the forces massed against her who care only for profit. Over a decade, she prevails more than her allies, or her enemies, or she ever imagined she could.

Two stories shape the book. There are her battles in conference rooms and picket lines in parking lots under a blistering sun, from hearings in Austin to her own hunger strike, for the companies to come clean about what they're dumping, and for the dumping and the leaking to stop.

Her worst opponents aren't the corporations and their lawyers. They are her brother, who works for Formosa; the fish house owner who reports on her to the company she's suing; and the other shrimpers and fishermen who shun her. People in town know the chemical companies are an evil and a danger, but they bring jobs and contracts. The more she exposes the companies' malfeasance, the more her town sees Wilson as the traitor.

The guys she went to grade school with now sit on the city council. First, they ignore her, and when she doesn't shut up, they smear her; the local paper buys right in. At OSHA, charged with ensuring worker safety, she finds a stunning lack of interest. At the state and federal EPA, she meets outright hostility from officials who flatly refuse to enforce the law. The affable congressman who represents her district has been bought. Tom DeLay doesn't come out looking good, and neither does Ann Richards.

Woven into the public battles is the other story – of Wilson's transformation. She's a mother with five kids and a husband spooked from Vietnam who doesn't work much and shoots snakes in the yard. She lives out from town in the salt marsh, her neighbors a colony of sandhill cranes, and she's happiest when nobody comes around. She doesn't like meetings.

Every meeting in town, every conference with the environmental lawyer in Houston who's helping her pro bono, every trip up to Austin for a hearing carries a cost: in her husband's sullen withdrawal, her family's disapproval, the days and nights away from her children and from the bay that is her spiritual sustenance. Money is scarce. She's buying tanks of gas and running up long-distance bills she doesn't know how she'll pay. She's alone out on the end of a thin limb.

Wilson has paid for the work she's done, and she knows the price of things. Her marriage has ended, her children have been largely raised by her family, and her solitude is a distant memory. She's won battles that no one believed she could, and has become a public figure. She doesn't whine about the costs, but notes them in her reckoning.

For the American environmental movement, "An Unreasonable Woman" could not arrive at a better time. Citizens across the political spectrum are growing alarmed at the Bush administration's rollback of protective legislation for water, air and national parks. Wilson, the Texas-grown, authentic, uncompromising heroine who stands up to corporate power, is the kind of figure who mobilizes people to action. This book may well do for environmentalism what "All the President's Men" did for government reform. Watch for the movie.

Barbara Davenport is a freelance writer in San Diego.

To which we add, bless you Diane, you are an extraordinary person, a true friend, always in our hearts.

See also this Alternet article

BUY DIANE'S BOOK, "AN UNREASONABLE WOMAN", DIRECT FROM THE PUBLISHER.

Posted by bhola at 08:28 PM | Comments (0)

September 19, 2005

Japanese troupe performs an Urdu drama in Bhopal

BHOPAL, September 19, 2005 3:09:47 PM IST

Hiroshima Ki Kahani (The Story of Hiroshima), an Urdu play written by anime cartoonist Nakazawa Keiji was performed in Bhopal by a student delegation from Tokyo University.

The intensity of the play was heart-rendering and succeeded in reminding the audience of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy of December 3, 1984.

The play, which deals with a somber theme, has been penned by Nakazawa Keiji and was produced by Professor Asada Putoka from the Tokyo University.

Using computer projection, the play poignantly described the events in Hiroshima after the American bombing in August 1945 as seen by a six-year-old.

General Ishii Ymiko, Masui Akiko, Hasmito Megumi, Koide Yumi, Sakai Rinko, Shimooka Takuya, Maruo Shino were among the actors who mesmerized the audience with their theatrical histrionics and their command over Urdu.

"The idea of this play was to combine the two tragedies, Hiroshima and Bhopal Gas Tragedy as they have some thing in common. Thousands of people suffered through it without any of their fault", says Ummi Fo, one of the performers.

The actors, their love for Urdu and their sheer commitment to bridge the cultural gaps was overwhelming.

The plays were greatly applauded by the audience.

"We are here with a message of peace. The tragedies were upsetting but now we should leave them behind and form a beautiful world," said Professor Asada Putoka, Tokyo University.

In the same event, Professor Asada Putoka of Tokyo University also released a book Bharat Ka Hiroshima (India's Hiroshima). (ANI)

Posted by bhola at 03:01 PM | Comments (0)

September 18, 2005

Are India's politicians anything more than gang bosses?

The minister involved in the following shameful story, is Uma Shankar Gupta. Readers of this column have met him before. He is the politician who presided over the botched "clean-up" of the factory where barefoot women and children with brooms were sent into warehouses full of DDT and Lindane. His men it was who raised a cloud of toxic dust that poisoned hundreds. He is it whose followers celebrated his birthday with a cake weighing 53 kilograms and the longest flower garland in history. Now read on.

MP MINISTER THRASHED IN TRAIN TUSSLE
RASHEED KIDWAI

Bhopal, Sept. 17: A Madhya Pradesh minister got beaten up at an Uttar Pradesh railway station as the two states’ ruling parties used muscle power on their home turfs to settle a quarrel that began on a train.

BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh’s state transport minister, Umashankar Gupta, allegedly started the trouble by forcing Samajwadi Party leader Chandrapal Yadav off his air-conditioned coach on the Punjab Mail yesterday. This happened when the train, 2137 Down from Mumbai, was at Bina, Madhya Pradesh.

Yadav, a close associate of Samajwadi Party’s Jhansi MP Chatrapal Yadav, warned the minister he would avenge his humiliation. Within minutes, he was on his mobile, arranging for the minister’s entourage to be “welcomed” in Uttar Pradesh.

As the train chugged ahead and entered Yadav’s home state, Samajwadi Party activists gathered in large numbers at Lalitpur and Bijoli stations.

A police bandobast prevented trouble at Lalitpur but a determined mob forced the train to make an unscheduled stop at Bijoli, 14 km from Jhansi.

A shower of bullets and stones cowed down the minister’s security sufficiently for the Samajwadi Party goons to enter the coach. Gupta’s family slid below the seats to save themselves, but the minister had his honour and ego bruised with several punches and blows landing on him.

Gupta’s companions quickly herded him and his family into another coach but the minister’s security guard, personal secretary and a few others in the group had to be admitted to a local hospital.

Altogether, about a dozen people were injured. Seema Singh, a passenger from Mumbai, was hit by a bullet and her husband and a Government Railway Police (GRP) constable suffered shrapnel wounds.

As news reached Bhopal, it was the BJP’s turn to show its might. An angry mob ransacked the state Samajwadi Party office, burning furniture, posters, banners and whatever else it could lay its hands on. The police arrived but chose not to act.

Today, when the Samajwadi Party rushed to the Madhya Pradesh governor seeking Gupta’s dismissal, local police filed an FIR against unnamed persons for rioting, arson and trespassing.

Gupta and his family were travelling from Bhopal for his daughter’s engagement ceremony in Gwalior. Both are in Madhya Pradesh but the route passes through a stretch of Uttar Pradesh.

After the Guptas climbed into their AC coach, the minister accused fellow passenger Yadav, who had boarded from Mumbai, of misbehaviour. Soon, a quarrel began.

Yadav later managed to catch the Jhelam Express with the help of the local administration at Bina.

But his threats of revenge had already got a worried Gupta to spend the next half an hour on his mobile, talking to the Madhya Pradesh director-general of police and other authorities.

Posted by bhola at 09:47 AM | Comments (0)

September 17, 2005

Eerie echoes of Bhopal as Katrina conspiracy theorists start tallying the numbers

WHO ARE THE 75.000 BODY BAGS FOR?

By Lynn Landes

16 September, 2005
Source: Opednews.com

Questions mount over Hurricane Katrina's death count. Estimates are now well below 10,000 with the death toll currently standing at 648 for Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida. So, why did the Bush Administration order 75,000 body bags?

Along that line, other things don’t add up. For instance, why did FEMA contact a crematorium in the local area; how could people identify their loved ones if only ashes remain? Why did FEMA rebuff efforts of volunteer morticians? Why did the feds try to ban reporters from covering the body recovery effort? Why have the feds employed mercenaries in New Orleans? Don't we have plenty of volunteers, police and military in the U.S. to get any job done that needs doing? What's really going on?

I don't know with any certainty, but here are some theories:

Maybe the Bush Administration doesn't want us to know how many people died because they just can't take the political heat for being completely incompetent. That's somewhat understandable. Maybe they ordered 75,000 body bags and hired Houston-based Blackwater mercenaries as more pork barrel projects. Nothing new there.

Or, maybe the feds want to hide bodies in an effort to grab land for their developer friends, or deny insurance claims for their friends in the insurance industry, as some people assert happened last year after Hurricane Charley in Florida. The Bush Administration can’t count on the police or military to carry out their dirty work, so they use private security firms. That's in keeping with the Bush Administration's MO (modus operandi).

Or, maybe they don't want us to know exactly how some of these folks died. Maybe some New Orleans police did not abandon their stations. Maybe they were murdered while trying to protect their city. After all, Mayor Ray Negin made public statements saying, "The CIA might take me out". What was that all about? There are reports that there was a shoot-out between New Orleans police and contractors. And rumors are rampant that the 17th Street levee was bombed to protect the wealthier parts of New Orleans. Something along those lines occurred in the Great Flood of 1927.

Or, maybe the body bags have little to do with Katrina. Maybe the bags are for us. On September 11th, the Bush Administration announced a new Pentagon guideline to allow pre-emptive nuclear strikes. Most people think that means an attack on Iran. However, some observers believe that some place in America (perhaps off the Carolinas' coast) will be the Bush Administration's first target.

Under the cover of Katrina, maybe the Bush Administration hopes no one will notice an order of 75,000 body bags.

In Bhopal too the authorities went to extreme lengths to hide the death toll. Here is the testimony of a municipal worker who was engaged in removing dead bodies from the city:

THE TESTIMONY OF MOHAMMED KARIM

"I used to drive a truck to dispose of dirt and waste. My truck was also a special truck - I used to pick up unclaimed dead bodies from the mortuary, I was used to doing it. That night (3rd December 1984) I put in thousands of bodies that we dumped - in one grave we would put 5-6 bodies, and we burnt piles and piles with logs. Many bodies were burnt unindentified - Muslims were burnt and Hindus were buried.

"They (the govt.) said 'leave your wives and children in your houses and go on duty'. We used to be on duty till 12:00 at night and after that the military trucks used to come and dump the bodies in the Narmada river. This went on for three to four days. Even on the 16th (of December 1984) we had to come back again. They gave us Rs 500/- for this but then they took it back from our wages.

"We would fit 120 bodies in one truck and this we would fill and empty five times a day. There were eight trucks on duty (so that is 4,800 bodies a day). It carried on for exactly the same intensity for three to four days, and after 12:00 am the military took over.

"We took a bulldozer and dug pits to bury all the animals. Some people were picking up bodies and some animals. 50 - 60 drivers were all working that day (3rd December). We picked up the bodies with our own hands. Every time we picked one up it gave out gas. The bodies had all turned blue, and had froth oozing from their mouths.

"In some houses everyone had died so there was no one to break the locks. In one case a 6 month old girl had survived and everybody else (mother, father and siblings) was dead. I broke the locks to that house.

"At least 15 - 20,000 people died in those first few days. What they said in the papers was absolutely wrong. What could I have done? I was a government servant. What the government said was absolutely wrong but what could I do?

"Those who have survived are like the living dead. My lungs have become useless: till today I'm being looked after by Hamidia hospital. Ever since I got affected I get vertigo - I would have to stop my truck because I get vertigo if I drive. My hands and feet don't work, I can't see well. The last two to three years I've gotten much worse."

If Mohammed Karim is right - and he was there - even the initial death toll could have been as high as 20,000.

Posted by bhola at 06:30 PM | Comments (0)

September 15, 2005

Bhopal on the Bayou

The following message reached us via friends in the US

This is a lady's story about what the people are really going through down there.

I heard from my aunt last night that my cousin Denise made it out of New Orleans; she's at her brother's in Baton Rouge. from what she told me: her mother, a licensed practical nurse, was called in to work on Sunday night at Memorial Hospital (historically known as Baptist Hospital to those of us from N.O.). Denise decided to stay with her mother, her niece and grandniece (who is 2 years old); she figured they'd be safe at the hospital. they went to Baptist, and had to wait hours to be assigned a room to sleep in; after they were finally assigned a room, two white nurses suddenly arrived after the cut-off time (time to be assigned a room), and Denise and her family were booted out; their room was given up to the new nurses. Denise was furious, and rather than stay at Baptist, decided to walk home (several blocks away) to ride out the storm at her mother's apartment. her mother stayed at the hospital.

She described it as the scariest time in her life. 3 of the rooms in the apartment (there are only 4) caved in. ceilings caved in, walls caved in. she huddled under a mattress in the hall. She thought she would die from either the storm or a heart attack. After the storm passed, she went back to Baptist to seek shelter (this was Monday). it was also scary at Baptist; the electricity was out, they were running on generators, there was no air conditioning. Tuesday the levees broke, and water began rising. They moved patients upstairs, saw boats pass by on what used to be streets. they were told that they would be evacuated, that buses were coming. then they were told they would have to walk to the nearest intersection, Napoleon and S. Claiborne, to await the buses. they waded out in hip-deep water, only to stand at the intersection, on the neutral ground (what y'all call the median) for 3 1/2 hours. the buses came and took them to the Ernest Morial Convention Center. (Yes, the convention center you've all seen on TV.)

Denise said she thought she was in hell. they were there for 2 days, with no water, no food. no shelter. Denise, her mother (63 years old), her niece (21 years old), and 2-year-old grandniece. when they arrived, there were already thousands of people there. they were told that buses were coming. police drove by, windows rolled up, thumbs up signs. National Guard trucks rolled by, completely empty, soldiers with guns cocked and aimed at them. nobody stopped to drop off water. A helicopter dropped a load of water, but all the bottles exploded on impact due to the height of the helicopter.

The first day (Wednesday) 4 people died next to her. The second day (Thursday) 6 people died next to her. Denise told me the people around her all thought they had been sent there to die. again, nobody stopped. The only buses that came were full; they dropped off more and more people, but nobody was being picked up and taken away. they found out that those being dropped off had been rescued from rooftops and attics; they got off the buses delirious from lack of water and food. Completely dehydrated. The crowd tried to keep them all in one area; Denise said the new arrivals had mostly lost their minds. They had gone crazy.

Inside the convention center, the place was one huge bathroom. In order to shit, you had to stand in other people's shit. The floors were black and slick with shit. Most people stayed outside because the smell was so bad. But outside wasn't much better: between the heat, the humidity, the lack of water, the old and very young dying from dehydration... and there was no place to lay down, not even room on the sidewalk. They slept outside Wednesday night, under an overpass.

Denise said yes, there were young men with guns there. But they organized the crowd. They went to Canal Street and "looted," and brought back food and water for the old people and the babies, because nobody had eaten in days. When the police rolled down windows and yelled out "the buses are coming," the young men with guns organized the crowd in order: old people in front, women and children next, men in the back. Just so that when the buses came, there would be priorities of who got out first.

Denise said the fights she saw between the young men with guns were fist fights. She saw them put their guns down and fight rather than shoot up the crowd. But she said that there were a handful of people shot in the convention center; their bodies were left inside, along with other dead babies and old people.

Denise said the people thought there were being sent there to die. Lots of people being dropped off, nobody being picked up. Cops passing by, speeding off. National Guard rolling by with guns aimed at them. And yes, a few men shot at the police, because at a certain point all the people thought the cops were coming to hurt them, to kill them all. She saw a young man who had stolen a car speed past, cops in pursuit; he crashed the car, got out and ran, and the cops shot him in the back. In front of the whole crowd. She saw many groups of people decide that they were going to walk across the bridge to the West Bank, and those same groups would return, saying that they were met at the top of the bridge by armed police ordering them to turn around, that they weren't allowed to leave.

So they all believed they were sent there to die.

Denise's niece found a pay phone, and kept trying to call her mother's boyfriend in Baton Rouge, and finally got through and told him where they were. The boyfriend, and Denise's brother, drove down from Baton Rouge and came and got them. They had to bribe a few cops, and talk a few into letting them into the city ("Come on, man, my 2-year-old niece is at the Convention Center!"), then they took back roads to get to them.

After arriving at my other cousin's apartment in Baton Rouge, they saw the images on TV, and couldn't believe how the media was portraying the people of New Orleans. She kept repeating to me on the phone last night: make sure you tell everybody that they left us there to die. Nobody came. Those young men with guns were protecting us. If it wasn't for them, we wouldn't have had the little water and food they had found.

That's Denise Moore's story.

-- Lisa C. Moore

Posted by bhola at 06:43 PM | Comments (0)

Finally, Union Carbide responds to an Indian court

15 September, 2005

For the first time in nearly a decade, the infamous Union Carbide Corporation has responded to a notice served by courier under the order of the Jabalpur High Court, Madhya Pradesh, in a case about liability and modalities of remediation of Union Carbide's contamination in Bhopal.

In an earlier hearing, the High Court had directed NGOs and survivor organisations to use their considerable expertise to submit a detailed road-map and workplan for containment and remediation of toxic wastes, contaminated soils and structures, and contaminated groundwater in and around the Union Carbide factory site.

At a hearing held on 15 September, 2005, Justices Mr. Sushilkumar Pande and Ms. Wagmare of the Jabalpur High Court declined to hear arguments because they had taken over the case only recently and needed time to go through the original petition and other case documents.

The Court accepted the road-map and related documents filed by the NGOs. The Court also accepted NGOs' request for easy access to the factory after NGOs complained that the State had put up numerous obstacles to accessing the site, and hence had made their task of presenting a well-research remediation plan difficult. The Court directed the District Collector to grant full access to the Union Carbide site to at least 5 people from among the NGOs.

Separately and most signficantly, the Court indicated that it had received a response from Union Carbide Corporation requesting 6 weeks time to file a reply. Granting the request, the Court has adjourned the matter to October 29, by which a response from the elusive Union Carbide is expected.

Nityanand Jayaraman
For International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal
H19/4 Gangai Street, Kalakshetra Colony, Chennai 600 090

Posted by bhola at 09:21 AM | Comments (0)

September 11, 2005

Disasters often made worse by our failings

Philadelphia Enquirer, Sept 11, 2005

by STUART DIAMOND, Professor, Wharton Business School

The increasingly evident failures of planning and logistics following Hurricane Katrina are very similar to those with a number of other well-known disasters of the last quarter century: the Bhopal gas leak in India, the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl nuclear accidents, the space shuttle crashes, and the World Trade Center attack.

That the previous disasters were caused by people, not weather, is of no consequence. The institutional failures that allowed significant loss of life are the same, and they have continued without much improvement for decades. They include the following:

Nearly the exact conditions and consequences of all of the disasters, including Katrina, had been modeled in detail and were well known to experts.

Officials responsible for protecting human life were either unaware of the expert studies or ignored them.

Little or no infrastructure was put in place to mitigate the disasters once problems began to unfold.

In all cases, the public had been assured - fasely - that worst-case or nearly worst-case scenarios had been planned for.

After the disaster, the government officials responsible for averting or mitigating disaster claimed that the disaster had been "unavoidable," was "unthinkable," and that "no one could have prepared for this," when in fact these statements were also untrue.

To be more specific about the comparisons: In the Bhopal gas leak in India, thousands more died because the government allowed poor people to live right up against the plant fence, unprotected from the poison gas. With Hurricane Katrina, the government allowed thousands of people to live below sea level and right up against a levee system that needed upgrading or repair.

In the World Trade Center disaster, even with former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's leadership in calming the public, serious questions have been raised about the organization and effectiveness of emergency workers - the same kind of problems that have surfaced with Katrina. In both cases, lives were lost unnecessarily.

In the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl nuclear accidents, the design of the hardware, as well as the emergency response in terms of government and evacuation, was poor and late. Same thing with Katrina.

In the space shuttle accidents, warnings from experts went unheeded - just as with Katrina. Indeed, the major federal agencies involved - whether the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or the Federal Emergency Management Agency - simply didn't do the job in the way the public had expected them to do it: fast, organized, with copious resources.

The world is now faced with even greater threats from terrorism. If the institutions can't handle high wind and a lot of water, how are they going to handle poisons and radiation?

After decades of failures, we need to make some improvements. First, the government's communication system is terrible. Not just after disasters, but beforehand - in getting to decision-makers the studies of experts and the warning signals. A lot was made of this problem after Sept. 11. Katrina shows that our early-warning system is still poor for many disasters. A process needs to be developed, for disasters natural to technological to criminal, so that the vast expertise we have accumulated actually results in change.

Second, no leadership structure exists that gives one person, or one office, head responsibility in disaster response. This should be a 24-hour office charged with assessing the problem immediately and being able to command and muster large resources immediately. In virtually all of the disasters mentioned here, responsibility and blame were fragmented.

Third, the ability of the government to warn and move people quickly is very poor. What will happen if there is a poison gas incident in a metropolitan area? Does the average citizen really know what to do in a disaster? Why are people given the choice to stay home in a public-health emergency? And even if people are moved, there is little infrastructure set up to receive people from other areas in crisis.

One of the fundamental responsibilities of government is planning. As in too many previous disasters, the cost in life and money from Katrina will be in vain unless the people taxpayers pay to develop and implement planning actually do the jobs they keep telling us they are prepared to do.

Stuart Diamond (diamonds@ wharton.upenn.edu.) covered the Bhopal, Chernobyl, and Challenger space shuttle accidents as a reporter for the New York Times, and Three Mile Island as a reporter for Newsday.

Posted by bhola at 11:14 AM | Comments (0)

September 06, 2005

Pro-Chemplast police revoke permit for anti-PVC march

6 September, 2005

Just as 20 pollution-impacted villagers from Mettur and Cuddalore were to launch their 8-day march from Salem, Tamilnadu, on 5 September 2005, police landed up at the venue of the launch with a letter from the Deputy Commissioner of Police revoking the permission granted for launching their walk in Salem. (See also news story in Indian Express).

At 12 noon, the marchers were sent off from Mettur on public transport after a short and somber function inaugurated by Mr. Kolathur Mani of the Thanthai Periyar Dravida Kazhagam.

Organisers of the march were earlier denied permission to start the march on 3 September from Mettur or take it through Salem district at the eleventh hour by the Mettur police. However, the organisers managed to move the Madras High Court and secure their right to walk through areas such as Salem city where permission had already been obtained. In accordance with the Court order, the march was rescheduled to begin on 5 September. However, totally oblivious of the High Court order and in what appears to be a hasty decision to prevent the march from starting at any cost, the Salem city police has issued an order banning the march in direct violation of the High Court order.

Interestingly, the letter of the Salem police mentions that their revocation is based on a decision by the Madras High Court to ban the march considering its anti-labour nature. The Madras High Court has issued no such direction, indicating that the Salem police’s orders have been prompted by information and considerations that may not be entirely official.

The Salem police are in a quandary now that they have realised that they have unwittingly violated a court order in their enthusiasm to accommodate the company’s interests. Organisers intend to sue the Salem police in the Madras High Court and request the court to conduct an enquiry into possible complicity between the administration and the company.

The organisers are resolved to continue the walk through Cuddalore district, and are hopeful that the Cuddalore police will not succumb to Chemplast’s pressure tactics and revoke the permit already given. The rescheduled walk will begin on 10 September, 2005, from Vridhachalam and end in Cuddalore on 13 September, 2005, covering a distance of

"It is good that the Salem city police so crudely revoked our permission. It exposes their complicity with Chemplast, and shows how the police is here to protect industrialists and not people. We will not be cowed down by Chemplast or the police’s threats of violence and are resolved to carrying out a walk from Mettur to Cuddalore at a rescheduled date, besides marching from 10 September onwards from Vridhachalam to Cuddalore to warn SIPCOT residents about the dangerous antecedents of Chemplast," the West Konur Farmers Welfare Association said.

Mettur is the site of Chemplast Sanmar Ltd’s highly polluting and dangerous PVC factory. Despite the widespread pollution and the losses (to health, livelihoods) suffered by Mettur residents as a result of Chemplast’s activities, the Tamilnadu Government secretly approved the company to set up a controversial 140,000 tonne/year PVC factory in SIPCOT industrial estate, Cuddalore. SIPCOT is an overpolluted industrial estate in coastal Tamilnadu. Numerous agencies, including the Tamilnadu State Human Rights Commission, have acknowledged the human rights violations by chemical industries in the region, and recommended against the setting up of new polluting facilities here.

The Chemplast PVC proposal was first rejected by the SIPCOT residents in 2002. Subsequently, the proposal was moved to Krishnapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. In 2003, Krishnapatnam villagers unanimously rejected the project. The twice rejected project has now been re-invited to its originally proposed site amidst much controversy and allegations of irregularities.

Decision on the proposal which has been pending environmental clearance from the Union Ministry of Environment has been twice postponed because of the massive public opposition and the numerous technical irregularities in the proposal.

Organisers of the anti-PVC march include: West Konur Farmers Welfare Association, Thanthai Periyar Dravida Kazhagam, SIPCOT Area Community Environmental Monitors, FEDCOT, SEED, DEPORT, Tamilnadu Environmental Council, Tamilnadu Green Movement, Corporate Accountability Desk.

INDIAN EXPRESS NEWS ARTICLE

Anti-PVC padayatra scuttled

Express News Service

Salem, Sept 5: The Mettur to Cuddalore anti-PVC padayatra planned by a farmer’s association and a few NGOs was abruptly called off on Monday after dramatic last minute developments.

Even as the organisations were preparing to begin the padayatra around 4:30 pm, they were informed by the Salem city police that the permission for yatra, which had already been cleared by Madras High Court, was being denied without assigning valid reasons.

Originally the organisations had planned the padayatra from Mettur to Cuddalore, but had been denied permission by the Mettur DSP. However, the Madras High Court on Friday last, partially quashed the DSP order and permitted the yatra from Salem city.

However, the High Court reportedly held on Monday said that the police order will be in force. The order was not sent to Salem City police but to District Police only. The City police thus had acted in violation of the court orders, the activists said.

The padayatra had been proposed by the groups to show solidarity with the people of SIPCOT area in Cuddalore where Chemplast Sanmar has planned to start its Rs. 500 crore PVC manufacturing facility despite severe opposition from the locals and environmental groups.

It was also to create awareness about the environmental risks arising out of the disposal of the hazardous waste from PVC units, and at the same time to urge the government to stop setting up new units and monitoring of existing units.

The West Konnur Farmers Association, one of the organisers of the padayatra, in particular, had first hand experience of such risk, thanks to the “indiscriminate disposal” waste from Chemplast’s Mettur plant.

According to Piyush Sethia, Director SEED, one of the NGOs participating in the campaign, “this is clear case of suppression of democratic rights to highlight an issue concerning public health and safety. The very same powers that had been exploiting the people and environment in Mettur for decades are at work again with the police and Administration support,” he said.

However, Salem SP R. Armugham said that the police had appraised the court that the proposed padayatra had been to target one particular industrial unit and that there was genuine apprehension of law and order problem.

The police, he said, also viewed the campaign anti-labour and anti-government. It was on this ground that the organisations were refused permission for the padayatra.

Meanwhile, the activists are planning to move the High Court on the matter again. “We have not abandoned the campaign. We have only given up the padayatra temporarily,” said another activist.

The move to set up the PVC unit in Cuddalore SIPCOT was stopped after a public hearing conducted in 2002.

An attempt by the company to relocate the project to Andhra Pradesh also fell through as the Pollution Control Board there refused permission.

However the company has obtained a NOC from Tamil Nadu government subsequently and is currently awaiting clearance from the Union Environment Ministry.

Besides Konnur Farmers Associations, the others involved in campaigning are SEED, FEDCOT, Corporate Accountability Desk Chennai, Tamil Nadu Green Movement, Community Environmental Monitoring Group, and Tamil Nadu Environmental Council and Thanthai Periyar Dravida Kazhagam.

Posted by bhola at 10:46 PM | Comments (0)

September 04, 2005

Katrina: An open letter to the radical/progressive community

MAUREEN HAVER
Sunday, Sep. 04, 2005 at 2:05 AM

Dear friends, radicals, progressives and anarchists,

There is this great myth that natural disaster is the "great equalizer" holding no prejudice towards any one race or class. While nature may hold no preference, we live in a society that makes its choice of victim clear. Whether its trailer parks in tornado alley or the low level 9th ward in New Orleans, it is almost always the poor and minorities that carve out their existence in places most vulnerable to nature's wrath or the wrath of humans with toxic factories and refineries fueled by greed and consumption.

As peace activists, we have consistently pointed out that the Bush administration is siphoning desperately needed funds and resources to fight an illegitimate war in Iraq. We have warned against being stretched too thin and asked the question, what will happen when disaster strikes at home? We now know the answer: the poor, the infirm and the downtrodden will die horrific deaths as federal agencies struggle with their incompetence. By practically disabling FEMA, cutting the budget for the New Orleans levee system and calling the National Guard to arms in Iraq, the Bush administration's myopic focus on Iraq and the War on Terror has left us more exposed than ever before. In what should be Homeland Security's shining moment, it is now clear that the Bush administration is ill-prepared to respond to large scale disaster be it at the hands of humans or nature. The lesson comes at the cost of innocent lives that for too long already have been ignored and forgotten on the fringes of society.

As anti-capitalists and anti-racists, we have decried the corporations and brutal system that breeds inequality and heartbreak along the fault-lines of class and race. We have pledged our solidarity to the working class, to the poor and oppressed. We have raised fists and banners in their names but I am stuck in this netherworld between blinding optimism and abject cynicism and lament that for too long that is all we have done (certain exceptions are not ignored). The devastation wrought on New Orleans and the Mississippi shoreline all too clearly exposes the quietly raging river current of class disparity and racism winding throughout this country.

As environmentalists, we have been the right wing's "chicken little" foretelling of the days to come when furious storms unleashed by global warming would rip through our lives. NASA recently revealed their "smoking gun" for global warming found in studying the ocean and its increasing temperatures. And now in the wake of Katrina even mainstream press is daring to pose the question, could global warming have contributed to Katrina's strength? According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, hurricane wind speeds have increased by 50% in 50 years, that warm water is a crucial ingredient to hurricanes, makes such findings even more sobering. As environmentalists, we have warned against disrupting nature's defense mechanisms against storms whether its clear-cuts begetting landslides in the Pacific Northwest or the eradication of the wetlands surrounding New Orleans for the sake of "development". We have removed natural defenses and for too long, we people of consciousness have voiced our fear over what the cost will be and our cries have largely fallen on deaf ears.

So, is this intended as an "I told you so" or as a stratagem for how we can capitalize on this and use it for the "movement"? Indeed no, I write this with a heavy heart, a fear of the world becoming more unhinged than it already is and regret that for too long we have "intellectualized" a movement and bounced from issue to issue never linking them together in any meaningful way. Some of us (not all) have missed the forest for the trees and lack deep committed connections to one another and those that suffer daily under this system. We have focused on goals and movements and unconsciously/consciously objectified and tokenized along the way. As radicals, anarchists and progressives it should be our compassion, love and desire to live our lives a better way in balance with nature and one another that sets us apart. Some of our bitter predictions have come true and it's time to put our money where are mouth is and support the victims of Katrina and a system we defiantly oppose. What were once talking points have becomes screams echoing along the coastline of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. Hopefully people are converging throughout the country with similar orientations, planning how to send aid in any form possible and not waiting for United Way or the Government to tell you how. People are dying folks, the very people we have purported to stand in solidarity with for so long, even more are displaced with whatever possessions they had destroyed. I don't have perfect answers for what we can do or how we can help but I know there are answers out there. We talk so much of community and whether you're in Portland, Houston or New York, how we respond will reflect how deep our commitment to community truly is.

As humans, all other "activist" labels aside, we need to come together with a meaningful message of compassion, love and solidarity that is not measured by our words but by our actions.

With love, rage and a little bit of hope,

maureen haver
houston, texas
maureen@riseup.net

Posted by bhola at 06:49 PM | Comments (0)

Hurricane Katrina: What is Cuban President Fidel Castro's secret?

ENOUGH Sunday, Sep. 04, 2005 at 10:19 AM

Last September, a Category 5 hurricane battered the small island of Cuba with 160-mile-per-hour winds. More than 1.5 million Cubans were evacuated to higher ground ahead of the storm. Although the hurricane destroyed 20,000 houses, no one died.

THE TWO AMERICAS

By Marjorie Cohn

09/03/05 "t r u t h o u t" -- --- Last September, a Category 5 hurricane battered the small island of Cuba with 160-mile-per-hour winds. More than 1.5 million Cubans were evacuated to higher ground ahead of the storm. Although the hurricane destroyed 20,000 houses, no one died.

What is Cuban President Fidel Castro's secret? According to Dr. Nelson Valdes, a sociology professor at the University of New Mexico, and specialist in Latin America, "the whole civil defense is embedded in the community to begin with. People know ahead of time where they are to go."

"Cuba's leaders go on TV and take charge," said Valdes. Contrast this with George W. Bush's reaction to Hurricane Katrina. The day after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, Bush was playing golf. He waited three days to make a TV appearance and five days before visiting the disaster site. In a scathing editorial on Thursday, the New York Times said, "nothing about the president's demeanor yesterday - which seemed casual to the point of carelessness - suggested that he understood the depth of the current crisis."

"Merely sticking people in a stadium is unthinkable" in Cuba, Valdes said. "Shelters all have medical personnel, from the neighborhood. They have family doctors in Cuba, who evacuate together with the neighborhood, and already know, for example, who needs insulin."

They also evacuate animals and veterinarians, TV sets and refrigerators, "so that people aren't reluctant to leave because people might steal their stuff," Valdes observed.

After Hurricane Ivan, the United Nations International Secretariat for Disaster Reduction cited Cuba as a model for hurricane preparation. ISDR director Salvano Briceno said, "The Cuban way could easily be applied to other countries with similar economic conditions and even in countries with greater resources that do not manage to protect their population as well as Cuba does."

Our federal and local governments had more than ample warning that hurricanes, which are growing in intensity thanks to global warming, could destroy New Orleans. Yet, instead of heeding those warnings, Bush set about to prevent states from controlling global warming, weaken FEMA, and cut the Army Corps of Engineers' budget for levee construction in New Orleans by $71.2 million, a 44 percent reduction.

Bush sent nearly half our National Guard troops and high-water Humvees to fight in an unnecessary war in Iraq. Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Paris in New Orleans, noted a year ago, "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq."

An Editor and Publisher article Wednesday said the Army Corps of Engineers "never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security - coming at the same time as federal tax cuts - was the reason for the strain," which caused a slowdown of work on flood control and sinking levees.

"This storm was much greater than protection we were authorized to provide," said Alfred C. Naomi, a senior project manager in the New Orleans district of the corps.

Unlike in Cuba, where homeland security means keeping the country secure from deadly natural disasters as well as foreign invasions, Bush has failed to keep our people safe. "On a fundamental level," Paul Krugman wrote in yesterday's New York Times, "our current leaders just aren't serious about some of the essential functions of government. They like waging war, but they don't like providing security, rescuing those in need or spending on prevention measures. And they never, ever ask for shared sacrifice."

During the 2004 election campaign, vice presidential candidate John Edwards spoke of "the two Americas." It seems unfathomable how people can shoot at rescue workers. Yet, after the beating of Rodney King aired on televisions across the country, poor, desperate, hungry people in Watts took over their neighborhoods, burning and looting. Their anger, which had seethed below the surface for so long, erupted. That's what's happening now in New Orleans. And we, mostly white, people of privilege, rarely catch a glimpse of this other America.

"I think a lot of it has to do with race and class," said Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. "The people affected were largely poor people. Poor, black people."

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin reached a breaking point Thursday night. "You mean to tell me that a place where you probably have thousands of people that have died and thousands more that are dying every day, that we can't figure out a way to authorize the resources we need? Come on, man!"

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff had boasted earlier in the day that FEMA and other federal agencies have done a "magnificent job" under the circumstances.

But, said, Nagin, "They're feeding the people a line of bull, and they are spinning and people are dying. Get off your asses and let's do something!"

When asked about the looting, the mayor said that except for a few "knuckleheads," it is the result of desperate people trying to find food and water to survive.

Nagin blamed the outbreak of violence and crime on drug addicts who have been cut off from their drug supplies, wandering the city, "looking to take the edge off their jones."

When Hurricane Ivan hit Cuba, no curfew was imposed; yet, no looting or violence took place. Everyone was in the same boat.

Fidel Castro, who has compared his government's preparations for Hurricane Ivan to the island's long-standing preparations for an invasion by the United States, said, "We've been preparing for this for 45 years."

On Thursday, Cuba's National Assembly sent a message of solidarity to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. It says the Cuban people have followed closely the news of the hurricane damage in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, and the news has caused pain and sadness. The message notes that the hardest hit are African-Americans, Latino workers, and the poor, who still wait to be rescued and taken to secure places, and who have suffered the most fatalities and homelessness. The message concludes by saying that the entire world must feel this tragedy as its own.

Marjorie Cohn, a contributing editor to t r u t h o u t, is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, executive vice president of the National Lawyers Guild, and the US representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists.

Posted by bhola at 04:59 PM | Comments (0)

September 03, 2005

One dead, 200 hurt by gas leak

From correspondents in Bhubaneswar, India

ONE person died and 200 others were treated for breathing problems after chlorine gas leaked from a water treatment plant in the eastern Indian state of Orissa, local officials and doctors said today.

The leak was plugged after it was detected in the town of Sambalpur, a railway employee's colony, 300 kilometres west of Orissa's state capital Bhubaneswar, late yesterday, a city official said.

"The situation is under control. The leak was detected and sealed by experts. There is no cause for panic," said Raghunath Pradhan, a district magistrate in Sambalpur.

Most of the 200 injured suffered from breathing problems, eye irritation and severe nausea, doctors said, adding that 56 of the injured were in serious condition.

"Thank God for the midnight rain. It actually helped in soothing the atmosphere. Otherwise there could have been more problems," Debashish Das, a resident of the town, said in a telephone interview.

Editor: The problem was foreseen years ago, witness the following article published in 1999. Anyone working on this problem please contact the editor of this website..

ORIENT MILLS OPERATION IN BRAJRAJNAGAR HEALTH HAZARD FOR WORKERS AND LOCALS

by Dhruba Das Gupta

Brajrajnagar Feb 13, 1999

Not a single worker of Orient Paper Mills in Brajrajnagar, working in the electrolysis bleaching (EB) plant, has lived for more than a year after retirement in the past four or five years, according to an officer in the mill. The workers there do not have adequate protection against chlorine gas leakage, which happens regularly.

It is common to see convoys of uncovered trucks carrying coal along the road to Brajrajnagar. Most of these are from the opencast mines.

The Ib Thermal Units (I&II) of the Orissa Power Generation Corp (OPGC) at Banharpalli have electrostatic precipitators (ESPs) to catch the dust from chimneys. But these ESPs are "unable to control the particulate level in the emission to the level prescribed by the pollution control board". So flyash is a sticky problem.

Welcome to Brajrajnagar, situated in Jharsuguda district in Orissa.

The once-pristine Ib Valley is now host to a number of industries, all of which are responsible for one or more kinds of pollution. Itis currently the centre of a storm following the Orissa government's decision to give the go-ahead to proposals to generate 10,000mw of power by companies like AES Corp., Consolidated Electric Power Asia (Cepa), Aditya Aluminium, Sterlite Industries and OPGC. This power is entirely for export, and the damage to the environment will be massive. The affected population spreads over three districts -- Jharsuguda, Sambalpur and Sundargarh. The population of Brajrajnagar municipality itself was 70,000 as per the 1991 census.

Any effort to focus on the Ib Valley area throws up numerous instances of industrial pollution, and the starting point of this is easily Orient Paper Mills (OPM) of Brajrajnagar in Jharsuguda district.

Complaints against the mill, reeling under work suspension since January 2, are many. Situated on the bank of the river Ib, and functioning since 1939, the mill has been discharging effluents into the river, a major source of water for villagers upstream and downstream.

It drew rawmaterials extensively from the nearby bamboo and hardwood forests, thereby directly exploiting available forest resources. Inside the mill, workers are exposed to occupational hazards because the mill manufactures some of the chemicals that are used in making the pulp. Labour care is a neglected area because health check-ups are infrequent.

Water-borne diseases are a major problem in the area. Till 1989, there was no effluent treatment and water from the lagoons was released into the river directly. According to R C Das, ex-chairman of Orissa Pollution Control Board (OPCB), "Full-fledged land treatment (in the mill) is (being) followed for the last 3-4 years."

The pipes that carry untreated water to the land treatment plant from lagoon no. 3 leak regularly. This happened for three days during investigations carried out by The Financial Express.

The mill uses chlorine for bleaching its pulp, and gas leaks are a common occurrence. Bleach plant effluents are a major source of toxicity. OPM usesmercury cell technology, which has been banned by the Supreme Court. This is because it is a polluting technology, which is being progressively replaced by membrane cell technology all over the world. In India, no new plant adopts mercury cell technology.

According to R C Das, "The pollution control board is aware of the fact that the mill uses mercury cell technology." The reason why there has been no intervention is that the plant is small! But within the electrolysis bleaching plant, there have been many cases of mercury poisoning.The villagers upstream and downstream complain of malaria, diarrhoea, dehydration, a number of water-borne diseases, and skin diseases like scabies.

According to a report prepared by Ib Paribesh, an NGO working in the area for more than four years now, almost all the surface water has become unfit for human consumption. The contamination of groundwater resources has also reached a critical stage.

Villagers in Itabhatta, a village that is 2 km upstream from the point ofdischarge, are vociferous in their complaints. "Almost every house has a patient. Doctors advise us not to drink this water and to leave the village. Half our money goes to the doctors every month. But where will we go?" says Bhubno Khamari, ex-councillor in one of the wards of Brajrajnagar.

The villagers say that before the mill came up, the river water was clear and water from the wells suitable for drinking. Now, not even the wells (municipal and private) from which drinking water is drawn have clear water. An inspection of both kinds of wells by The Financial Express showed black water unfit for consumption, suggesting that the groundwater has been affected.

But the villagers here can use the river water at least for non-drinking purposes. In Kutabaga, a village about 3 kms downstream from the point of discharge, villagers cannot do even that. The Ib Paribesh report points out that the agricultural yield of the area has been tremendously reduced, and 23 slum pockets near the bank of the river arehighly affected by water pollution.

R C Das corroborates, "It is true that there are frequent complaints of clandestine discharge of effluent, at least partially, to the river Ib." He should know. He was chairman of the State Pollution Control Board in two phases for eight years (September 1986 to July 1992 and August 1995 to December 1997).

Pollution Control Board sources also revealed that the wall of one of the lagoons broke down in 1997.

The in-patients register of the Employees State Insurance (ESI) hospital in Brajrajnagar shows a high incidence of water-borne diseases among villagers from Itabhatta, Chunabhatta, Ratakhandi and Kutabaga -- all villages along the river -- in the past four months.

There is also a flyash problem. The OPM residential area is close to the mill and dumping is a daily activity. According to OPM sources, the ESPs, which are meant to run continuously, stop functioning after 6 pm and the resulting flyash emissions affect the eyes of the nearby residents and graduallyspread over the entire Brajrajnagar.

Says a longtime resident of OPM colony, "Every day, the ESPs are switched off after 6 pm. It is impossible to move without glasses because of a burning sensation in the eyes."

Incidentally, the ESPs of two of the boilers, which frequently become non-functional, were manufactured by Orient Engineering, which, OPM sources said, was the company's first contract. Orient Engineering had no experience of manufacturing ESPs.

Labour care is at a minimum. There are a large number of cases of criminal negligence of chlorine gas leakage and mercury poisoning in their electrolysis bleaching (EB) plant.

The notices writ large in the EB plant read: "In case of chlorine gas leakage, report immediately." But health check-ups are infrequent.

A senior medical officer, who is now at the ESI headquarters in Bhubaneswar and was posted in Brajrajnagar from 1993-96 as the seniormost at the ESI hospital, admits that cases of chlorine gas leakage were serious enough to demand herpersonal intervention on two occasions. Superintendents have also been frequent visitors to the hospital, the officer admitted.

The Regional Labour Institute unit in Calcutta, which oversees the eastern region, is empowered to deal with any case related to occupational health hazards in OPM. But information on public health is kept a closely guarded secret. RLI deputy director D K Das told The Financial Express that information could be disclosed only after permission from the Union Ministry of Labour!

Posted by bhola at 04:18 PM | Comments (0)

September 02, 2005

Now the Madhya Pradesh High Court serves attendance notices on Union Carbide

In the continuing court case being heard in the Madhya Pradesh High Court, Jabalpur, the judge has ordered notices to appear to be served on Union Carbide Corporation at its former US headquarters and at the head office of Dow Chemical its 100% owner.

The court has also welcomed the intervention of survivors' organisations in the case, and has overruled objections from state and central officialdom that the NGOs were more of a hindrance than a help. Survivors and their supporters have indeed hindered the "clean-up" began by the MP state government, objecting to the use of untrained workers with no safety gear or equipment, to the raising of clouds of toxic dust that covered whole neighbourhoods and left several people hospitalised, and to the unsafe containment methods being proposed by the authorities.

The Hon. Justices were evidently less than convinced by the assertions of the state authorities that they are quite capable of dealing with the matter. The state's scientific authority NEERI (National Environmental Engineering Research Institute, Nagpur) has a long and shameful history of incompetence and cover-up. See this article. In the court's judgement the NGOs have the potential to transform themselves from mere critics of the government to valuable advisors and have accordingly alloted them time to draw up a "road map" plan.

For the relevant court orders, please see the Press Releases archive.

Posted by bhola at 05:30 PM | Comments (0)

September 01, 2005

Millions face chemical plant terror risk

By Martin Sieff Aug 31, 2005, 22:47 GMT

WASHINGTON, DC, United States (UPI) -- The former counter-terror chief for Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush is warning that most U.S. infrastructure is still almost as vulnerable as it was on Sept. 11, 2001. And he singled out chemical plants as tempting targets for terrorists seeking to create man-made Bhopal-scale disasters in the United States.

Almost four years after the terror attacks on the World Trade Center in new York City and the Pentagon in Washington, DC that took 3,000 lives, America`s vast and sprawling chemical industry remains vulnerable, Richard Clarke, who has been a leading critic of the Bush administration`s terrorism and Iraq policies, told an audience at the New America Foundation Tuesday.

"We have failed to protect chemical plants," sufficiently from possible terrorist attacks, Clarke said.

He cited Congressional Research Service figures that there were more than 100 plants where a successful attack could affect more than a million people.

There had been some progress in reducing the number of such plants capable of expelling large amounts of deadly chemicals into the atmosphere since September 2001, but not much and not enough, he said.

The number had been reduced from 123 four years ago to 110 today, Clarke said.

"It is still easy for terrorist groups use our infrastructure against us," he said.

The study was performed at the request of Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., who asked the Congressional Research Service to analyze risk-management plans and maps that plants provide to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The study estimated that half of Utah`s population could be harmed by toxic gas if terrorists attacked a state chemical storage facility

Clarke criticized the administration and the Republican-controlled Congress for not giving priority to pushing through legislation yet.

"Congress has diddled for three years on a Chemical Security Act," he said. "It still hasn`t acted."

Clarke said that there had been progress in creating a sweeping new security infrastructure within the United States government, especially the creation and organization of the Department of Homeland Security. But while the department had launched a large number of necessary initiatives to upgrade security on mass transit and industrial infrastructure, almost none of those programs appeared yet to be near completion or fulfillment, and the government and Congress still lacked definitions and metrics by which they could measure progress in implementing them.

"There is not a clear statement out of the Department of Homeland Security and the administration yet about where we will be in a certain year," he said.

Legislation to mandate major security upgrades at chemical plants has been mired on Capitol Hill, with major chemical corporations and their lobbyists fiercely opposing some measures, which they say gave the government too much say in how chemicals are processed.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-MN, chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, has said she hopes to introduce a new bill in the coming session. Jurisdiction over chemical security on Capitol Hill was recently moved to her committee after the issue had been deadlocked for nearly four years in the Senate Environmental Committee chaired by Sen. James M. Inhofe, R-OK. Inhofe is closely linked with the petrochemical industry.

Most of the concern in recent months in the chemical safety debate has focused on the potential dangers posed by so-called toxic-by-inhalation chemicals like chlorine gas. A successful attack on one of the 90-ton chlorine rail cars that ply the line through downtown Washington during a major public even on the Mall could kill tens of thousands of people, according to a study by the U.S. military.

Chlorine was one of the poison gases most-used in World War I. Some 650,000 British, French and German troops were killed or seriously injured by it, usually with incapacitating effects for the rest of their lives.

The Bush administration seems to have broken the three and three-quarter year-long logjam in June when Homeland Security`s infrastructure protection chief Bob Stephan threw the department`s weight behind compulsory, federally imposed chemical security regulation.

"It has become clear the entire voluntary efforts of these companies alone will not address security for the entire sector," Stephan told Collins` committee.

The administration continues to push for voluntary cooperation and enforcement of safety standards in many security programs with private corporations in such areas as monitoring the millions of cargo containers that enter the United States every week. And it had previously followed the same laissez-faire philosophy on enforcing -- or, its critics allege, not enforcing -- federal chemical safety standards.

However, Stephan was responding to growing warnings form other government agencies, independent research institutes, unions and public interest groups about the continuing vulnerability of chemical plants across the United States.

Many water and sewer utility companies have abandoned toxic chlorine and switched to safer laundry bleach to keep their facilities free of harmful infections and bacteria. However, this so far has been a voluntary and patchwork response.

And it has not begun to address the broader issues warned about by Clarke.

But the patchy nature of the response has also led to a change of heart in the industry, with many firms realizing that only legislation will level the playing field between them and their less responsible competitors, who at present can cut costs by not investing in security.

Clarke`s fears are not merely hypothetical.

On Dec. 3, 1984, a leak of methyl isocyanate gas at a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India killed 3,800 people and blinded or otherwise maimed scores of thousands more.

The U.S. chemical manufacturing sector generated $91 billion in exports last year. It employs nearly one million people and annually generates sales of $460 billion.

UPI Homeland and National Security Editor Shaun Waterman contributed to this story.

Copyright 2005 by United Press International

Posted by bhola at 01:40 AM | Comments (0)