VAPI, GUJARAT, India — Some 250-270 million litres of highly toxic industrial wastewater, including heavy metals, is released to the environment daily in three industrial estates in Gujarat, India, reveals a Greenpeace study today
Some 250-270 million litres of highly toxic industrial
wastewater, including heavy metals, is released to the environment
daily in three industrial estates in Gujarat, India, reveals a
Greenpeace study today.
Greenpeace says the survey demonstrates money being wasted in
the existing end-of-pipe trapping technologies, and called on the
World Bank to stop promoting these non-solutions.
Greenpeace activists, together with local representatives,
posted warning signs today in Vapi - one of the industrial areas
affected by wastewater outfalls from the Common Effluent Treatment
Plants at Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation (GIDC).
Greenpeace declared the area contaminated with industrial poisons
that could severely damage life.
"End-of-pipe pollution control technologies such as the Common
Effluent Treatment Plants promoted by the World Bank are a waste of
money. They do not destroy dangerous pollutants such as heavy
metals and organic poisons and are a threat to a healthy
environment and to the lives of people in the neighbourhood," said
Nityanand Jayaraman, Greenpeace's Asia Toxics Campaigner.
Greenpeace's survey focused on analysing samples of "treated"
and untreated industrial wastewater from rivers and Common Effluent
Treatment Plants (CETPs) - promoted as a "magic" solution to combat
pollution - from three industrial estates located at Ankleshwar,
Nandesari and Vapi, in the Gujurat region. The areas were
contaminated with highly toxic poisons, including persistent and
life-threatening pollutants - polychlorinated biphenyls,
hexachlorobenzene and toxic heavy metals such as lead, cadmium,
chromium, copper and mercury.
Protesting in front of a 1-metre diameter pipe spewing red
coloured effluent in Vapi GIDC with placards that read "Stop Toxics
Pollution," Greenpeace activists demanded the Indian government to
come clean on providing reliable information about industrial
pollution to communities, and adopt progressive policies aimed at
preventing pollution.
"There are no magic technologies to make pollution disappear.
Landfills, CETPs and Incinerators are all polluting technologies;
the only solution is to invest in clean production processes that
eliminate the use of toxic chemical inputs," said Nityanand
Jayaraman operating from the Rainbow Warrior currently in
India.
Some of the poisons found in the Gujurat industrial estates are
persistent in the environment and poisonous in very low doses. Some
of these chemicals, such as polychlorinated biphenyls and
hexachlorobenzene are global pollutants that not only contaminate
the local environment, but can circulate around the globe. End-of-
pipe pollution trapping technologies such as Common Effluent
Treatment Plants do not have any ability to deal with these poisons
and pollutants such as toxic heavy metals. Analyses of groundwater
from a farmer's well found pollutants such as trichloroethene,
cancer-causing benzene and chlorobenzenes:
The results suggest that industrial contamination may already
have damaged groundwater sources.
Greenpeace added the three sites its Global Toxic Hotspots map
with its report of industrial pollution in and around industrial
estates in South Gujarat, India. Greenpeace says it will highlight
the findings at the upcoming negotiations of the United Nations
Environmental Program to draft a convention on regulating a class
of deadly pollutants called Persistent Organic Pollutants.