Plan to dispose of 337 MT of toxic waste yet to be implemented; no plan for 11 lakh tonnes of contaminated soil plus mercury, waste dumps; SC, NGT orders ignored for years as groundwater contamination spreads
Four decades after the Bhopal gas tragedy, hundreds of tonnes of toxic waste remain on the premises of Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL). Despite multiple court orders and warnings, government authorities have not disposed of the waste safely, officials confirmed to The Hindu.
The Union government has released ₹126 crore to the Madhya Pradesh government to carry out plans to dispose of 337 MT of the toxic waste, which was collected and kept in the premises of the factory in 2005, documents show.
However, a 2010 government-commissioned study showed that, apart from this 337 MT of toxic waste, the factory premises also contains about 11 lakh tonnes of contaminated soil, one tonne of mercury, and nearly 150 tonnes of underground dumps. The government has no plans yet on how to deal with this.
Disposal yet to start
The presence of waste dumps within the premises show that the 2005 collection of waste was “incomplete”, the 2010 report noted. It had then recommended excavation of the toxic waste from the dumps in order to remediate it.
Subsequently, a ‘peer review committee’, formed in 2010 to look into different government studies till that point, recommended a comprehensive assessment. Fourteen years later, however, a proper reassessment is yet to be done.
“Though ₹126 crore was released in March this year for disposing 337 MT of waste, the state government is yet to actually begin the process of disposing it on the ground. We understand that there are some administrative issues,” a Central government official told The Hindu.
Delayed reassessment
In June 2023, an oversight committee — which met 12 years after its last meeting on May 25, 2011 – had again recommended that the Madhya Pradesh government undertake fresh studies to quantify groundwater and soil contamination and the underground dumps of toxic waste.
When asked about the rest of the waste and the reassessment, the official said, “A proposal for reassessment of the toxicity after the 2010 study was also submitted to the State government about six months back, but that has also not made much headway. The government is first trying to deal with the 337 MT of waste and then look into the rest of it.”
Another source privy to the development also said that reassessment is necessary as it has been 14 years since the 2010 study and the ground realities would have changed by now. “But there is no movement on this front as of now,” the source added.