Removal of debris from site of 1984 Bhopal disaster dismissed as ‘farce’ | India

Forty years after one of the world’s deadliest industrial disasters hit the Indian city of Bhopal, a cleanup operation has finally begun to remove hundreds of tons of toxic waste from the site.

However, local campaigners have accused the Indian government of greenwashing, claiming that the 337 tons of debris removed this week represent less than 1% of the more than 1 million tons of hazardous materials left after the disaster, and that the cleanup have done nothing to tackle chemicals. pollution of the area.

There have also been protests over fears that burning the waste will only lead to further pollution and toxic exposure in other areas.

Around midnight on December 2, 1984, the Union Carbide chemical plant in Bhopal exploded, releasing 40 tons of toxic methyl isocyanate and other deadly gases into the air.

More than 3,000 people were killed in the immediate aftermath, and at least 25,000 are estimated to have died in total.

Local groups have argued that the true number is likely to be even higher due to the long-term effects of the toxic gas, which include high rates of cancer, kidney and lung disease. A large number of babies have been stillborn or born with severe disabilities to gas-affected mothers in recent years.

Despite the scale of the industrial disaster, a proper operation to remove all toxic waste from Bhopal has never been carried out, either by the American company Union Carbide, now owned by Dow Chemicals, which was the majority owner of the plant at the time, or by the Indian government, which took back control of the land where the factory stood.

Rights groups have accused the US companies and the Indian government of trying to downplay the lasting impact of Bhopal’s pristine chemical waste.

Official investigations submitted to the courts have shown that the pollution, which includes highly toxic heavy metals and UN-banned organic pollutants, has spread to at least 42 areas in Bhopal. Tests near the site revealed that the levels of cancer-causing chemicals in the groundwater were 50 times higher than what is accepted as safe by the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Lethal levels of toxic waste have also been found in factory pits and open ponds where the waste was dumped by the Union Carbide plant before the explosion.

Campaigners have fought for years for Union Carbide and Dow Chemicals to be held responsible for the costs of cleaning up and safely disposing of the waste, a process expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, but the US company has always denied responsibility, citing a 1989 settlement with the Indian government.

In what was initially seen as progress, the Madhya Pradesh High Court last month ordered authorities to finally take responsibility for the chemical waste, criticizing the inertia of the past four decades and asking if the government was “waiting for another tragedy” .

But the government has now removed 337 tons of above-ground waste that had already been containerized and moved to storage in 2005, which campaigners claim no longer posed a significant threat and did not contribute to groundwater contamination.

Rachna Dhingra, a coordinator for the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal, called the move a “farce and greenwashing publicity stunt to remove a small portion of the least harmful waste” and questioned why Union Carbide and Dow Chemicals were not held accountable .

She said: “There is still 1.1 million tonnes of toxic waste leaching into the ground every day that they refuse to deal with. We can see for ourselves the birth defects and chronic health conditions. All this does is take the heat off the government and lets the American companies off the hook. It does nothing to help the people of Bhopal, who for decades have been seen as useless.”

Dhingra was also highly critical of the government’s decision to take the removed waste for incineration at a plant 150 miles away in Pithampur that has previously failed tests to carry out such operations safely and exposed local people to high levels of toxins.

The incineration, which is likely to take about six months, will create 900 tons of toxic residue, which will then be buried in landfills. The move has sparked major protests from people in Pithampur, who fear further toxic exposure and leakage into their groundwater from the waste.

Swatantra Kumar Singh, the director of the state government’s Bhopal gas tragedy relief and rehabilitation department, denied there was any contamination risk to the local ecosystem and said the waste would be disposed of in an environmentally safe manner.

Many local people and human rights groups consider the Bhopal disaster to be a continuing miscarriage of justice. The 1989 settlement resulted in most victims receiving 25,000 rupees (about $500 at the time), while most of those who developed related conditions or died years later received nothing at all.

None of the nine Indian officials convicted in 2010 for their roles in the disaster served any time in prison, and Dow Chemicals has maintained in court that it is not criminally responsible for the actions of Union Carbide’s Indian subsidiary until it bought the parent company. company.

Campaigners have accused the US government of blocking attempts to extradite Union Carbide and Dow Chemical officials to stand trial in India over wrongdoing that led to the blast.