Cola plant ‘drinks up’ groundwater in UP

International food and beverage major Coca Cola is heading for a trouble in UP with the Central Ground Water Board describing the ground water situation in Mehdiganj district - the place of company's bottling plant - as critical putting a question mark over the company's plant to expand the plant's capacity. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Apr 20, 2013, 02:02:07 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

International food and beverage major Coca Cola is heading for a trouble in Uttar Pradesh with the Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) describing the ground water situation in Mehdiganj district - the place of company's bottling plant - as critical putting a question mark over the company's plant to expand the plant's capacity.

The company did not respond to an email questionnaire in this regard.

India ground water regulator, CGWB, has observed last year that the company's current ground-water extraction in Mehdigank was "excess" but did not blame the company for depleting ground water sources in the region. In 2009, the board has declared Arajiline block where the company's plant is situated as "critical" for underground water sources and banned new handpumps and borewells in the region.

The board, a body under Water Resources ministry, monitoring of the underground water in the region shows that the level is going down since 1999, the year when the plant was set up. The water was around five meters below the ground in 1999 which dipped to around 13 meters in 2011.

The company extracts about 50,000 cubic meters of water annual from the underground resources and was required to replenish them through water conservation measures.

The board had also found that the water conservation measuring including rainwater harvesting did not have much impact on depleting ground water sources, a cause of rebellion against the plant by local villagers.

Now around 15 village councils in the vicinity of the plant has now written to the board for rejecting the company's request to expand the capacity of the plant from 50,000 cubic meters annual to 250,000 cubic meters. These 15 villages are located within 15kms of the bottling plant.

The panchayats hold the bottling plant responsibility for depletion in the underground water level, a claim denied by the company. The water from underground sources is key for agrarian needs of the local villagers and their livelihood.

"There is grave injustice taking place here as villages and farmers are left without water while the company is mining water to earn profit," said Mukesh Kumar, Sarpanch of Nagepur panchayat in a statement released through an NGO India Resource Centre.

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

Catch every big hit, every wicket with Crickit, a one stop destination for Live Scores, Match Stats, Infographics & much more. Explore now!

Stay updated with all top Cities including, Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai and more across India. Stay informed on the latest happenings in World News along with Delhi Election 2025 and Delhi Election Result 2025 Live, New Delhi Election Result Live, Kalkaji Election Result Live at Hindustan Times.