Mumbai oil spill: Ministries blame different ships

Two Central government ministries had a differing view on the source of oil spill on Juhu beach in south Mumbai even as environmentalists fear it can cause huge ecological damage to marine biodiversity.

Updated on: Aug 8, 2011, 21:55:46 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Two Central government ministries had a differing view on the source of oil spill on Juhu beach in south Mumbai even as environmentalists fear it can cause huge ecological damage to marine biodiversity.

On Monday, the Shipping ministry said the source of the spill was from sunken ship M V Rak Carrier whereas environment ministry gave a clean chit to it. Instead, it believes that the spill is from M V Pavit, the ship that drifted from coast of Oman and reached Mumbai on July 31.

"The spill is because of localized phenomenon and not due to Rak Carrier," a ministry statement said, quoting the Maharashtra government report. Earlier the shipping ministry statement blamed Rak Carrier, which sank last Thursday with coal, fuel and diesel on board, for the spill. A senior ministry official told Hindustan Times that the Maharashtra state pollution control board has been asked to examine M V Pavit for the possible leak, a day after the spill was noticed. Central Pollution Control Board chairperson S P Gautam had been sent to Mumbai to track the exact source of the leak and study its ecological impact.

"We have also asked National Institute for Oceanography to study the ecological impact of the oil spill," Environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan said. Gautam said estimating the exact ecological loss will take time as the "extent" and "exposure" of the oil spill in mangrove areas will have to be examined.

Ecologists, however, fear the worst saying the spill has spread up to 12 nautical miles from the beach to rich marine bio-diverse areas including mangrove forests within a day with little effort to contain it.

"It is very unfortunate that the oil slick is evident at the peak time of fish breeding as well as flowering and fruiting season of most of the mangrove species. Even the thin layer of oil persisting for significant time will kill marine fauna," said Swapna Prabhu, systematic botanist and taxonomist with the Bombay Natural History Society.

Gautam hopes the ecological loss to be minimal saying the spill has reduced and was just 1 to 2 mgs per litre which was negligible. Shipping ministry said they have been able to contain the spill.

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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