Bhopal gas tragedy: 40 years on, hazardous waste disposal continues to hang fire

Bhopal: Forty years after the Bhopal gas tragedy, the world's worst industrial disaster, 337 metric tonnes of hazardous waste remains in a shed of the now defunct Union Carbide despite Rs 126 crore being given to the Madhya Pradesh government by the Centre for disposal, social activists said on Monday.

In the intervening night of December 2-3, 1984, highly toxic gas methyl isocyanate (MIC) leaked from the Union Carbide factory, killing 5,479 people and maiming more than five lakh others.

Another 1.1 million tonnes of contaminated soil is lying in and around the plant, due to which water sources have also been affected, said ND Jayaprakash, co-convener of Bhopal Gas Peedith Sangharsha Sahayog Samiti and an intervener in a writ petition connected to the tragedy.

It will come up for hearing on Tuesday, he added. On September 11 this year, the Madhya Pradesh High Court, while hearing a writ petition filed in 2004, had expressed displeasure over delay in starting the work of clearing the hazardous waste from the factory.

Asking the MP Pollution Board chairman to personally look into the matter, the HC division bench of Justices Vivek Rusia and Avanindra Kumar Singh had said the work had not started despite the Centre giving the state government Rs 126 crore in March for the purpose.

The hearing on the writ petition set for October 24 could not take place due to Diwali vacations. "In 2005, a year after the writ petition was filed in HC in 2004, the Union and MP governments collected around 345 metric tonnes (MT) of waste lying on the surface of the abandoned Union Carbide Factory. But this constitutes less than 0.05 per cent of the total hazardous waste that lies there," claimed Rachna Dhingra of Bhopal Group for Information & Action.

In 2012, the Supreme Court recognised that toxic waste has contaminated groundwater of 22 communities located around the factory and had ordered the MP government to provide clean piped drinking water to people in the vicinity, Dhingra said.

"In August 2015, ten years after the filing of the writ petition, the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) incinerated around 10 tonnes of this waste on a trial basis at a facility in Pithampur (near Indore). It recommended the same for the rest," she said. Dhingra pointed out the MP government had filed a Special Leave Petition in the apex court against the incineration of 345 tonnes of waste claiming it would pollute Yashwant Sagar Dam, the source of drinking water for Indore.

At the time, German company Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) offered to transport and incinerate the 345-tonne Union Carbide waste in Hamburg there at a cost of Rs 54 crore but the firm later withdrew its proposal to the MP government after public cry in that nation, Dhingra claimed.

"However, in June last year, the MP government announced it will get the waste incinerated at a cost of Rs 126 crore in Pithampur," she said. Jayaprakash said something appeared "fishy" in this Rs 126 crore plan since the one proposed by the German firm was Rs 54 crore. It is misuse of taxpayers' money since the cost of incinerating every tonne as per this plan is between Rs 40,000 to Rs 50,000, Jayaprakash said, adding he would approach the HC on the matter.

"The waste on the ground can be collected and safely disposed of in a closed-loop incinerator that can monitor the levels of dioxin and furans, the most poisonous chemicals known to man, released. Or it can be stored in stainless containers and Dow Chemicals should be asked to take it to the United States," Dhingra said.