‘Clean up cost is inflated’

A central government committee suspects that the cost of decontamination of Union Carbide site in Bhopal was exaggerated and has sought review of the entire process to reach a realistic value.

Updated on: Sep 21, 2010, 22:54:55 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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A central government committee suspects that the cost of decontamination of Union Carbide site in Bhopal was exaggerated and has sought review of the entire process to reach a realistic value.

A GoM in July had estimated that the decontamination cost was about R 250 crore based on the studies done by Nagpur based National Environment Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) and Hyderabad based National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI)

The environment ministry had constituted a peer review group headed by Professor R.Kumar of Indian Institute of Sciences to examine the two reports presented before the GoM headed by home minister P.Chidambaram by Madhya Pradesh government.

The group, in its report submitted to the ministry, last week said quantification of contamination by NEERI and NGRI was very high. “Soil contamination is not more than 20,000 square meters,” said a government official, quoting the report.

NEERI and NGRI had estimated that 6,50,000 square meters of soil inside and outside the Union Carbide factory, from where gas leaked in 1984 killed quarter of a century ago, was contaminated.

It meant that 11 lakh metric tonnes of soil, which can fill a football pitch, will have to be removed and decontaminated costing the government between R 78 to R 117crore, as per NEERI and NGRI estimate. The total cost of decontamination including treating contaminated underground water was R 250 crore.

Now, the peer review group has said that the total cost of decontamination is not so high. “It may cost R 100 crore. The high cost was projected because of improper methodology used for evaluating contamination,” said a committee member.

Ira May, former head of US Army Remediation Board and B. Sengupta, member secretary of Central Pollution Control Board in August 2010 asked the environment ministry to conduct additional studies at the Union Carbide site before carrying out remediation activities. “The full extent of contamination needs to be better defined as to clarify a scope of work for remedial contractors,” they said in a letter to environment minister Jairam Ramesh.

But, Nityanand Jayaraman, associated with victims of Bhopal Gas Tragedy, said the assessment of the contamination was not comprehensive.

The ministry has now decided to take the peer review group’s report to the GoM for a final decision.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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