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Another Bhopal in the making in Mumbai?

Conventional wisdom has it that waste management must be done in a sustainable manner. But the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai has chosen an unsustainable and hazardous technology to manage its waste.

According to the agreement it has signed, a gasification-based Waste-To- Energy plant will soon be set up in the Gorai dumping ground, 50 km north of Mumbai, to manage the city's waste.

The cost of the plant is Rs 2.42 billion. The proposal claims that the plant will generate 21 MW of electricity from 1,000 metric tonnes of waste a day. The plant could be another Bhopal disaster in the making.

Gasification is an incineration process that emits dioxins, the most poisonous cancer-causing toxin known in the world (see box).

Incineration transfers the hazardous characteristics of waste from solid form to air, water and ash. It also releases new toxins, which were not present in the original waste stream, besides generating heavy metals.

In a situation in which India neither has standards nor the technical facilities to monitor and analyse these dioxin emissions, the MCGM has signed an agreement with Energy Developments Limited India. They intend to dispose of waste and recover electricity through the company's "pressure cooker" technology, which it calls a Solid Waste Recycling Facility.

The word "recycling" in the process is a misnomer used to mislead gullible bureaucrats and the media. In fact, a technology like this will kill the recycling sector and destroy the source of livelihood of people working in this sector.

According to a senior MCGM official who deals with solid waste management, the electricity generated from the WTE project will be sold at the rate of Rs 3.50 per unit. The plant has been given 7.33 hectares of land on lease for 20 years in Gorai.

In order to get this project implemented, the Union ministry of non-conventional energy will provide a subsidy.

The waste will be provided by MCGM. The Power Purchase Agreement is currently being finalised, adds the MCGM official.

Gorai comes under the Coastal Regulation Zone, so constructing a plant violates the CRZ notification, says Debi Goenka of the Bombay Environmental Action Group, a non-governmental organisation.

Also, contrary to Schedule IV of the Municipal Solid Waste Rules, 2000, the signatories of the agreement have not sought approval from the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board or Central Pollution Control Board, as is mandatory.

"We have not authorised any such plant in Gorai," confirms Munshi Lal Gautam, member secretary, MPCB.

EDL's claim that the plant will eliminate the need for a dumping ground is false. Where will the plant dispose of the ash?

Contrary to what MNES says, the gasification of fossil-fuel based wastes cannot be classified as renewable energy, as the fossil-fuel based waste resources are destroyed instead of being recycled. The gasifiers also destroy all the paper, card and kitchen waste in domestic waste, instead of recycling and composting.

EDL India is actually an Australian company. The agreement signed by MCGM and EDL is confidential, say MCGM officials amidst reports of Maharashtra's Right To Know Act. The agreement is inaccessible even to media people and researchers.

When asked and informed about the dangers of this technology, A M Gor, chief engineer, solid waste management, MCGM, said, "I can file a case against those who ask for minutes of the agreements."

The world's first and only SWERF, located in Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia, has been shut for technical reasons from January 29, 2002. According to the members of the government's four-member fact-finding mission which visited the Wollongong plant in March 2000, most information sharing by the companywas inadequate.

Also, the degree of documentation needed to support the development was stated to be unavailable or not forthcoming. In this context "it would not be possible for me to make strong recommendations in favour of the technology," admits H S Mukunda, a member of the mission.

Having encroached on 40 acres of land in Ghatkopar for a sewerage system, the WTE plant will take away 7.33 acres of land unmindful of the CRZ notification protecting mangrove forests, says Bittu Sahgal, editor, Sanctuary.

If the Maharashtra State Electricity Board and companies like Tata Power and others have even an iota of concern for environment and public health, they should not buy electricity from this polluting and experimental incinerator, he adds.

The advocates of the project claim that no segregation of the plastics from the garbage is required. This not only violates the Municipal Solid Wastes (Management Handling) Rules 2000, which stipulates segregation, and promotes recycling of "recoverable resources" but also pre-empts segregation and recycling efforts being made by municipalities and communities around the country.

"This is yet another instance of ignoring environment and public health effects. The gasification-based WTE technology is a failed technology," says Ravi Agarwal, a solid waste expert from Srishti, a NGO.

Adds D N Rao, environment economist from Jawharlal Nehru University, ash and suspended particulate matter that emerge from the combustion technologies is a huge perpetual problem because although there is volume reduction of waste through this technique, the management of ever growing ash remains.

Trusting Mumbai's waste to such an unproven technology is fraught with danger. It is even more disturbing that a company is being awarded such projects when it has failed to deliver in its own plant.

India is top of the POPs

Mumbai is only the tip of the iceberg. Even as India makes an international commitment to minimise the production and use of 12 of the most toxic chemicals in the world, known as the Dirty Dozen, by signing the United Nations Environment Program's, Stockholm Treaty on persistent organic pollutants, it subsidises and promotes the production of POP throughout the country, say environmentalists on the occasion of POPs International Day of Action on May 23, 2002.

Signing the POPs treaty is at odds with the current policy of the Union ministry of non-conventional energy sources to promote dioxin-emitting high heat waste-to-energy technologies.

The MNES has issued an executive order to all the state chief secretaries and the administrators of Union Territories asking them to promote such WTE projects.

As a consequence, agreements for many such toxic projects have been signed and are being signed around the country Surprisingly, these projects have undergone no environment impact assessment and public hearing process. The approval from the Technical Appraisal Committee has not even been sought.

Projects are coming up in places like Delhi's Gazipur gasification-based WTE project with 1000 MT per day to generate 25 MW of power, although it has been shelved following our pollution-related objections.

In Chennai, a Rs 1.70-billion WTE project at Perengudi landfill site has been finalised in February 2001. The Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board sources say, they have not approved the project since the civic body has not applied to the regulatory body as is mandatory under Municipal Solid Waste Rules, 2000.

In Bhopal, the municipal corporation has signed an agreement for a WTE plant for the disposal of 500 metric tonnes of waste per day. It is claimed that the plant will cost over Rs 1.30 billion and will generate 10.80 MW of electricity. WTE plants are also coming up in Lucknow, Guwahati and Chandigarh.

As a result of growing scientific evidence against incinerators, gasifiers, landfills and other "end-of-pipe" solutions, which generate POPs, developed countries have legislated severe environmental norms. What is more appalling is the fact that multinational corporations, international financial institutions and aid agencies are pushing such technologies.

There are three recent studies on India that show high levels of dioxins and organo-chlorine pesticides in human milk samples, wildlife and dairy products.

According to the first study, presented at an International Symposium on Dioxins in Seoul, Korea in 2001, breast milk samples collected from India showed the highest levels of dioxin-related compounds. Samples were collected from residents living around municipal dumpsites from Perengudi, Chennai, India.

In another study, the concentration of dioxins and other POPs were detected and measured in tissues of humans, fish, chicken, lamb, goat, predatory birds, and Ganges River dolphins collected from various locations in India. Dioxins were found in most of the samples analysed, with the highest in the liver of the spotted owlet.

It will be in the interest of our health and environment to ratify and implement the Stockholm Convention and enforce it. It will encourage indigenous and safer non-combustion technologies that can be implemented and operated at the community level. This could also help the informal sector improve its working conditions, encouraging composting and recycling rates.

(The writer works for Toxics Link, a non-governmental organisation)

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