A fire at Ankleshwar forced India to rethink how it handles hazardous waste. Drums carrying dangerous industrial sludge flew amid leaping flames and burst in the air at a waste storage at the industrial complex in Bharuch district of Gujarat on April 3 last year. Ash fell all around. People in nearby villages were told to evacuate; many suffered coughing, headache, nausea and burning sensation in the nose and throat.

It could have turned into a disaster worse than the Bhopal gas tragedy but for the change in the wind direction away from other factories (see ‘Bhopal to Bharuch’, Down To Earth, April 30, 2008).

Fire at Ankleshwar exposed careless handling of waste
Photographer:Ravleen Kaur

The fire burnt 250 tonnes of toxic industrial waste at the treatment, storage and disposal facility or tsdf in Ankleshwar. This waste had been sent there for incineration at 1,100°C because it was too dangerous to reuse or dump in a landfill. And burning it under ordinary conditions could release pollutants like cancer-causing dioxins and furans.

Waste oil and sludge—all paid for by industries—were leaking from barrels at Bharuch Enviro Infrastructure Ltd (BEIL), the tsdf that caught fire. Though BEIL —of which pesticide giant United Phosphorous is a major equity holder—cannot incinerate more than 50 tonnes of waste a day, it had crammed over 12,800 tonnes in sheds with narrow passage in between.

Prompted by the accident, the Central Pollution Control Board (cpcb) in April 2008 set up a committee under its former adviser R K Garg to stipulate detailed and explicit guidelines for storage of incinerable hazardous waste at captive incinerators and tsdfs, which are landfills with or without incinerators. In November, the board announced new guidelines (see Storage guidelines). Till then tsdfs were not bound by any time limit for storing hazardous incinerable waste, though being reactive and inflammable, the waste is risky to store— BEIL and the factory inspector in Ankleshwar believe the April fire occurred due to a reaction between the waste and the steel drum in which it was stored. Only industries were told not to store such waste for more than 90 days on their premises.

The committee decided that a tsdf should not store hazardous waste for more than six months. It noted sampling, analysis and mixing of the right kind of waste before incineration could take three months, but considering the time an incinerator requires for repairs, which is an annual affair, six months’ storage time is appropriate.

BEIL had waste lying there for up to two years, even though the Gujarat Pollution Control Board (gpcb) had allowed it 90 days’ storage time.

Industries in India produce hundreds of tonnes of waste every day that cpcb classifies harmful to our health and the environment. It can be toxic, flammable, corrosive, radioactive or reactive. Of this inflammable organic waste produced by industries like pesticide, pharmaceutical and refinery has to be incinerated. These are mostly synthetic chemicals that, scientists say, do not easily break down in the environment and deposit in human bodies through the food chain. They interfere with our biochemistry that affects our intelligence, immunity, behaviour and reproduction. Benzene used in bulk drug factories, for example, is a carcinogen. Exposure to it for a long time can be fatal.

Ten months after the fire—and despite orders to do so—neither gpcb nor the factory inspector of the area nor BEIL itself knows the nature of the waste burnt and the company it came from. On July 8, cpcb issued directions to BEIL regarding safety—like installing smoke and fire detectors, water sprinklers, providing ventilation, labelling drums to identify waste—under the Environment Protection Act 1986. The facility was asked to submit an action plan for incinerating the 12,800 tonnes of waste lying on its premises, and not to accept fresh waste till it had done so.

BEIL was given three months to act upon the directions. It trimmed the size of some sheds to create a wider passage between them, laid the storage areas with concrete flooring, installed fire hydrants and smoke detectors and labelled the drums.

“We have spent over Rs 7 crore on upgrading. Each drum has been painted and labelled as per the categories in hazardous waste rules,” said P N Parmeswaran, vice-president (environment) of United Phosphorus.

However, 4,000 tonnes of waste was still lying at the facility in December end. According to cpcb, 7,000 tonnes remained to be treated on October 13. So in more than six months, the company could take care of only 5,800 tonnes. Of this 1,000 tonnes were sent to another tsdf, Gujarat Enviro Protection and Infrastructure, in Surat, according to the documents obtained from gpcb under RTI. As per BEIL’s stated capacity at least 7,500 tonnes should have been incinerated in six months.

Environmental activists in Ankleshwar are now angry over the Madhya Pradesh High Court’s order in December allowing BEIL to incinerate 350 tonnes of toxic waste from the Union Carbide (now Dow Chemical) plant in Bhopal. “When they are not able to manage the waste of this industrial area, how can they take care of the waste in the Union Carbide factory?” asked Zia Pathan, a lawyer in Ankleshwar and member of Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti, a non-profit active in Gujarat.

Will BEIL be nailed? No criminal case is filed against it (see Where is the punishment?). Pollution control boards can act against the BEIL director under section 15 of the Environment Protection Act in case of loss of health or vegetation, for which the culprit can get jailed for five years. But they have not done so. Proving impact on health and vegetation is not easy. “If people have breathing disorders how can one know it is because of BEIL?” asked Pathan.

The waste has been lying at the plant since 1984 when the Bhopal gas tragedy occurred. The 350 metric tonnes of waste is at the centre of a legal wrangle between Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat governments.

The Gujarat government did not comply with similar orders passed by the high court in October 2007. A fire at the hazardous waste treatment facility (managed by Bharuch Enviro Infrastructure Ltd. or beil) and opposition from local non-profits were cited as main reasons for non-compliance.

The high court then got the beil site inspected by the Central Pollution Control Board (cpcb) which said that a backlog of 6,964 tonnes of waste would have to be cleared first. This finding was taken into account by the court when it said its order should be complied with in six weeks. Back of the envelop calculations however show that beil will have 2,464 tonnes excess waste to dispose and not 1,564 tonnes waste as estimated by cpcb in its affidavit. Therefore the plant will not be in a position to take in more stocks of toxic waste in January despite court deadline.

S K Nanda, state principal secretary for environment, said there was no question of

“allowing the waste to be brought to Gujarat”.

He was hopeful the issue would be resolved in the Supreme Court that is hearing an appeal of the state against contempt proceedings for not complying with earlier orders.

The apex court on November 8 had directed that chief secretaries of Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat and officials of the Union Ministry of Commerce should jointly decide on the modalities for disposing the waste. A joint report will be filed in the Supreme Court in January end when the case is scheduled for hearing. This will be much before the High Court deadline expires, Nanda said.

When her husband took chronically ill after communal riots drove them to Juhapura, a ghetto on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, poverty made life seem unmanageable. Free will then became a matter of Rs 8,000 for 40-year-old Zainab Bi. For a sum like that she was willing to swallow an unknown pill once in three months. It wasn’t much they were asking for really, so she gladly gave her thumb impression on the dotted line.

For companies researching new drugs the thumb impression was proof that Bi submitted herself to the experiment of her own free will. It was far more expensive to have such proof in countries where the multinational drug companies that sponsored the research had their headquarters. They were far more cumbersome, involved lengthy documentation and rigorous insurance plans. Clinical research organizations (cros) made the task far easier for these companies by carrying out their research in the ghettoes of India’s big cities. Drug trial was far less daunting; and inexpensive. People were more than willing to offer their bodies for bio-chemical experimentation. The official guidelines warned against monetary inducement.

It took Bi, and so many like her in Juhapura, only moments to make up their mind when a woman agent from a newly opened cros, Lambda Therapeutic Research Ltd, approached them for participation. She explained they would be required to take newly developed drugs for diseases like malaria, chikungunya, hiv/aids even. The agent spoke of possible risks, side effects and what not. Not all of it made sense to Bi. What did sink in was that she was going to be paid Rs 8000 for some new medicine that could cure hiv/aids. She had heard of this disease in radio messages.

In the beginning, Juhapura’s women were not sure how they would get their family’s permission to spend a night, or may be two, at the clinical research lab on the national highway not far from their slum area. When they learnt they were going to be paid between Rs 4,000 and Rs 10,000 the deal was too sweet to resist. The family could not afford to object either.

The transition from the city centre, where they earlier lived, to Juhapura made economic refugees of most people living here. Before the riots many of the 5 lakh inhabitants of Ahmedabad’s largest Muslim ghetto lived in thriving bustling areas like Naroda Patiya, Gulbarg Society, Vatwa. But Juhapura was a world apart, where the community was both the consumer and the vendor. The tailors, vegetable and meat sellers, small time hair-dressers and watch repairers that practised their trade sold services and products to one another. The vibrant market of the city centre was absent here.

Naturally therefore, if a tailor was making Rs 200 a day in Naroda Patiya, he could barely manage Rs 50 a day in Juhapura, said Noorjahan, community leader attached to a group ambitiously called Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan, Indian Muslim women’s movement. Once Bi’s husband fell chronically ill, it was hand to mouth for the couple and their four children. Under the circumstances, nitpicking over side  effects and other safety issues was a luxury. Rs 8000 was what mattered most.

Did they not worry at all? Jannat Bibi said she had heard they were tested for drugs for diabetes, asthma, cancer and even neurological disorders. Noorjahan said some women did complain of stomach problems and rashes on the body. Bi, who has been doing this for three years, said there was no reason for worry. “It is perfectly safe. I haven’t had a single problem in all these years.”

“…All eyes are on the women after a paper printed their photos. But what can they do? Going for these trials is their main source of income” NOORJAHAN, Community leader

Exposé leads to gossip

The problem Bi and her co-travellers in clinical trials faced was of a very different nature and not anticipated by any of the 300-odd women who made an occasional windfall by offering to participate in drug trials. In June this year an Ahmedabad Gujrati daily published an article on clinical drug trial and reported how multinationals made guinea pigs of the city’s poor; the article carried photographs of the Juhapura women with their names. In the uproar that followed, the women became the subject of gossip and criticism for venturing in the night to experiment with unknown drugs. Embarrassed by the fingers pointed at them, 55-year-old Amiya Bano’s son and daughter-in-law made her leave the house.

“These women are angry with me for bringing the newspaper reporter here. They are troubled because all eyes are on them now. But what can they do? Going for these trials is the main source of income for their families,”

said Noorjahan.

The trial

The drug trials were indeed a bit like Kafka’s trial for these women. They were not very clear, like the protagonist in the novel, what they were being tried for. Nor were they sure who was behind the trial. “They make us stay overnight, take our blood samples and then we have to take the pill next morning. We are not supposed to seek remedies anywhere else but the company if some ailment crops up,” said Bi.

So far nothing dramatic has taken place, said Noorjahan. But who can tell what manifestations will show up may be years later? And links between cause and any devastating side-effect will be lost in the hurly burly of India’s ghettoes, where clinical trials are gaining popularity as a livelihood option.

India offered just the perfect setting and plenty of business sense for conducting clinical trials. The subjects and patients who could be recruited at low cost made India a favourite destination for global pharma companies like Pfizer, GlaxoSmithkline, BristolMyers, and others. Add a technically competent workforce and a friendly drug control system and the clinical trial business was set to touch us $1 billion by 2010, up from us $200 million in 2007, estimated India’s Associated Chambers of Commerce and  Industry.

The drug regime would become even friendlier when regulations proposed by the Drugs Controller General of India were formalized; this was likely to be soon. The proposed regulations recommended phase i trials that tested safety and tolerability of a dosage of drugs developed outside India be allowed if the manufacturing company collaborated with an Indian one. At present India allowed phase i trials only for drugs formulated in India and drugs to treat hiv or cancer.

However, phase ii and iii trials for drugs formulated abroad were allowed in the country as they had already been tested safe. Phase ii trials checked the efficacy and side effects of a drug while phase iii trials confirmed its benefits and side effects on a wider sample. “Phase i and ii are the most dangerous stages of clinical trials in human beings.

Opening the doors to these trials will only increase exploitation of the poor. Why should we allow phase i trials of medicines which may not even be used in India and even if they are, it will only be the richer sections that will benefit,” said a public health activist.  “If these trials were for diseases that affected the masses, like tuberculosis and kala azaar (leishmaniasis), then we could support them as the result was going back to them and not feed corporate interest,” said Mira Shiva, chairperson of the ngo Health Action International, Asia Pacific.

An official of the cro, Lambda, was upbeat about the proposed regulations “This will only benefit the community. Even if the mncs do not share their intellectual property now, they will eventually have to come to India to market the drugs.”

The pharma giants collaborated with an Indian research agency for clinical trials that did the job for them at dirt-cheap rates, said a senior sales manager of a leading Ahmedabad based pharma company. In 2005, the government also passed the Patents (Amendment) Act, which assured protection of patents held by foreign companies, thus encouraging them to conduct trials in India. If and when something did go wrong, there was no punitive mechanism. “It is a long chain where work has been sourced down from the company to a clinical research organization to a hospital and finally to doctors. If a problem occurs, all of them will pass the blame to the other. There have been cases of suppression of mistakes in the past,” said Shiva.

Remunerations for clinical trials were also an issue. Volunteers were not supposed to be lured with payments.

“Participants may be paid for the inconvenience and time spent… However, payments should not be so large…as to make prospective participants consent readily to enroll in research against their better judgment, ”

said Indian Council for Medical Research guidelines on clinical trials. Clearly, the guidelines had no bearing on the brisk business of clinical trials in distant Juhapura.

The guidelines also stated a government-registered institutional ethics committee, comprising doctors, activists, lawyers and pharmacologists, would ensure there were no monetary inducements. With a gush in the number of clinical trials, several private ethics committees sprang up overnight. The cros needed an approval from an ethics committee before they could initiate a drug trial. It was simple. These  committees approved of trials for a fee. cros were only too happy to pay.

THE state highway between Viramgam and Surendranagar towns in Gujarat presents a stark contrast. On one side is a carpet of green fields for miles, and on the other, decaying Jowar and cotton crops, at places submerged in water. The 60 km highway itself remained under water for three days in mid-September.

The contrast makes clear the nature of floods in Gujarat. There are no rivers near inundated areas. After Surat floods in 2006, this is the second time that a major flood has happened in the state due to blocking of drainage paths. Most affected areas are in the peninsular Saurashtra region. In two days, September 17-18, it rained as much in Surendranagar district as it rains in a year there. “It rained more than 40 inches in 30 hours, leading to flooding. There was no time for water to recede,” said J D Bhad, collector of Surendranagar.

The damage was heavy. Over a hundred thousand hectares of agricultural land was damaged by water-logging. About two thousand houses have collapsed completely and 13,000 others are partially damaged. Yudhveer Jadhav, an elder member of Adalsar village in Surendranagar, estimates that in his Lakhtar taluka, cotton crops worth Rs 40 crore have been damaged.

Jadhav’s family itself had sown cotton in 4 hectares (ha). “We invested whatever we could in the crop and were waiting for it to grow,” he said. But then came floods. About 70 per cent of the crops and 20 per cent land in Adalsar are ruined. Jadhav has calmly accepted his fate. “It is a natural disaster, one cannot call it the fault of the government,” he said. But he does agree that had it not been for the raised highways and canals of the Sardar Sarovar Narmada Project, the damage could have been lesser.

In nearby Limbadi taluka, Kantibhai Bhatana also lost half his crops.

“Two acres (a little less than a hectare) of my land near the road is completely damaged and it will take years before anything grows on it. The sand and rocks that came with water will have to be removed manually and new soil will have to be spread,”

he said. The contrast was visible here as well. The crop in his field across the road, connecting Surendranagar town and Limbadi, was standing tall and healthy. “The rainfall did not affect that side much because the water receded quickly. On this side the water was blocked by the road,” he said.

Survey for compensation would take “some time”, said Bhad.

On the edge of Saurashtra in Little Rann of Kutch, salt workers called Agariyas were stuck in more than seven feet of water. Their newly installed machinery for salt production was submerged.

The Rann is a low-lying area that remains submerged for four months till August. In September the Agariyas migrate to the Little Rann of Kutch to produce salt. “The problem aggravated because there are no raised areas in the Rann where they could take refuge,” said Bharat Patel, who works with Agariya Hitrakshak Manch, an advocacy group for the rights of salt workers. Bodies of five fishermen were found in Little Rann of Kutch, he added. The nearby 42 sq km Nal Sarovar bird sanctuary was also under water.

Obstructive network

The damage due to the Narmada canal network in Saurashtra and to the network itself was huge. A yet-to-be-commissioned pump house in Lakhtar, the second largest in Asia, gave way under high water pressure. The canal breached at three places, aggravating the flood.

The Saurashtra branch canal of the Narmada project—that branches off from the main canal at Kadi in Mehsana district and runs across the Saurashtra region—is designed to hold a flow of about 400 cubic metres per second (cumecs), but the downpour led to a flow of over 600 cumecs. This was one of the reasons for breaches.

Asia’s second largest pump station in Lakhtar, now broken

There were also reports of villagers breaching the high embankment of the canal as water was being held in their village. “This is because at places the ground level is lower than the base of the canal,” said an official of the Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam Limited (ssnl) that manages the entire canal network, on the condition of anonymity.

The topography of the area is like a saucer. The first half of the Saurashtra branch canal is sloping, while the second half is flat, where water has to be pumped to keep it flowing.

“The rainfall happened in 110 sq km of the canal’s tail-end area. As the water was draining towards the slope, its movement was obstructed by the pump house, which can pump water only in one direction (away from the slope), thus it was broken,”

said an ssnl official. According to ssnl officers, more than Rs 50 crore will be required to reconstruct the pump and repair the breaches.

Rain pattern is not the same

Did the designers of the canal err in assessing its required holding capacity? Usually, engineers consider rainfall data of 50 years while deciding the design capacity, but a change in the rainfall pattern in the past few years has spoiled the calculations.

Saurashtra is a drought-prone area but rainfall pattern there is changing. The rainfall in 24 hours on September 19 was 1,123 mm in Lakhtar, almost double the average of total rainfall in a year there, 550 mm, according to the State Disaster Management Authority. The average is based on last 11 years’ data. In 2007, Lakhtar received 836 mm of rainfall. In Limbadi, rainfall in September was 622 mm in 24 hours as against an annual average of 699 mm. “I have seen floods only four-five times. The last big flood was about 35 years ago. But this year’s is the worst,” said octogenarian Megabha Mohan Samatiya of Moti Katechi village in Limbadi. In 2005, Limbadi received 1,245 mm rainfall.

But in recent years people in Surendranagar have suffered small floods almost every monsoon. “The canal breaches every year during monsoon in Halwad and Dhrangadra talukas. We have reported this to the mamlatdar, a block-level officer, several times but there is no action,” said Patel of Agariya Hitrakshak Manch.

Wherever the ground level is below the canal bed level, drainage siphons are created in the canal every one-and-a-half kilometers. But even siphons got submerged. They easily get clogged by silt and logs. “Drainage paths have got obstructed due to the canals which divide the topography into two. Whatever we do, we cannot fully compensate the requirements of nature. People will breach the dam when they see danger to their homes and crops,” admitted the ssnl official.

A study by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences released in August this year shows that about 52 per cent of the command area of the Narmada canal faces very high probability of water-logging and salination, resulting in crop loss. This is even as the supply for irrigation and drinking water has not been fulfilled according to its potential.

Himanshu Upadhyaya of the Delhi-based NGO Environics Trust said rainfall was a “frivolous” excuse for what happened in Saurashtra.

“This cannot be called flooding because none of these areas is near a river basin. The phenomenon of local flooding due to water-logging was evident in 2004. Infrastructure in Gujarat overlooks the gradient of land, be it canals or the highways,”

he said. The Ahmedabad-Vadodara Expressway had caused similar damage during the 2006 flood.
Farmers like Jadhav, however, continue to believe that floods are God’s will, giving the government a clean chit.

“Had it not been for the change in wind direction within 10 minutes of the fire, it could have spread to and destroyed all the nearby factories in the Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation (gidc) and villages”

says Manoj Kotadia, manager, fire and safety, Disaster Prevention and Management Centre, Ankleshwar.

Burning hazardous waste at the BEIL – Drum flying out of the fire

Burning hazardous waste at the BEIL – Part 1

Burning hazardous waste at the BEIL – Part 2

Burning hazardous waste at the BEIL – Part 6

The fire at BEIL was brought under control within 24 hours but people in surrounding villages are still reeling from the effects of toxic gases: a burning sensation in eyes and nose, difficulty in breathing and in some cases, as Down To Earth saw, rashes and fever. The cause of the fire is not known but preliminary investigation by the central and state pollution control boards and the local administration has exposed gross violations of environmental and safety norms at the treatment, storage and disposal facility (tsdf), which has also bid to incinerate the hazardous waste lying at the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal—a lucrative contract of over a million dollars. As Down To Earth went to press, it was reported that the Industrial Health and Safety Department had registered a case against beil under the Gujarat Factories Act, 1948, for making seven sheds for storing hazardous waste when it had permission for only two. It was the seventh shed that caught fire. Inquiries into the lapses of the extremely hazardous facility are on.

Dark dusk Black smoke at one of the sheds where the barrels are stored was first noticed at 5.30 p.m. “My office people observed the smoke and informed me,’ said P N Parmeshwaran, vice-president, environment, beil. However, the Disaster Prevention and Management Centre, just 2 km away, was informed only by 6 p.m. People in Jitali village, about a kilometre from beil, saw barrels flying in the air. But the company’s alarm at the panchayat building failed to ring. Later, the villagers found out that wire connections had not been made.

“Soon it was dark, the fumes were noxious and for a long time it was difficult to breathe,’ said Nilesh Kumar Patel of Jitali as he showed Down To Earth the footage of the blaze on his cell phone. Jitali was one of the three villages put on high alert; people were told to evacuate. The other two villages are Sarangpur and Dhadhaal Inam. Huge chunks of ashy waste fell all around. “Stone-like things fell on my roof. In the morning they were still stinking and oozing fumes,’ said Momina Shoib Kazi of Jitali. The impact was worst in Jitali because it was in the wind’s direction.

“High wind velocity and a change in the direction (towards empty fields) of the wind from west to east prevented a big disaster.Wind velocity of over 20 km per hour did not let the smoke settle, otherwise the barrels lying all over the place would have caught fire and it would also have been difficult for us to wade through the smoke,’ said Kotadia.

Children at Dhadhaal Inam, a kilometre west of the facility, had just come out of the madrasa when they heard explosions. They ran in the direction of the blasts and ended up with headache and a burning sensation in the nose and throat. Asif Iqbal Panchbaya, 10, has got rashes and high fever. “I took him to Bharuch for treatment but his condition has worsened,’ said his father Iqbal Panchbaya. The Primary Health Centre sent squads to the villages the same night. It says the fire affected 89 people.

Shocking irregularities
To understand the effects of pollution one needs to know the kind of toxins released in the air. But beil officials could not explain the nature of the waste burnt. “It was a kind of tarry waste or a solvent-based waste of high calorific value. We are trying to ascertain what exactly it was,’ said Parmeshwaran. The Hazardous Wastes (Management and Handling) Rules, 1989, however, lay down that all tsdfs have to keep a record of the kind of waste received and check the waste before accepting it for treatment.

RAVLEEN KAUR

Left in haze: Nature of waste unknown

“Thirty-seven kinds of waste are stored at a landfill site. Under the hazardous wastes rules a tsdf has to provide a monthly report to the Gujarat Pollution Control Board (gpcb) of how much waste it received, its classification, how much was stored and how much incinerated. The gpcb should reveal these reports. The company is at fault, but so is the pollution board for improper monitoring,’ says Yogesh Pandya, managing trustee of Safety, Health and Environment Association, a Bharuch ngo.

On the second day after the fire, gpcb installed machines at Jitali, beil and at Aventis’ factory to monitor the air quality. It also told Down To Earth that parameters were by and large under control. But gpcb did not collect samples for dioxins, furans and volatile organic compounds, which would indicate the toxicity of the air. “No lab in India is equipped to test dioxins and furans, so what can we do?’ said R G Shah, environment engineer, gpcb. Asked about heavy metals, Shah said samples were sent to the Netel India labs in Mumbai on April 4. When Down To Earth checked with the company, samples had not been received till the evening of April 8.

Since nobody knows what was burnt—as happened in the Bhopal gas tragedy—it is difficult to monitor contaminants or check for toxicity. While incinerators burn waste at very high temperatures to eliminate toxins, the fire burnt the hazardous waste at a much lower temperature. This is bound to release high levels of contaminants, which will settle on land and water.

Even the quantity of waste stored at beil raised eyebrows. According to the records it submitted to gpcb, 12,825 tonnes of oil was lying in its compound—though it cannot treat more than 50 tonnes a day. The hazardous wastes rules state an industrial unit cannot store waste in its compound for more than 90 days. In May 2007, M S H Sheikh, director of Surat-based ngo Brackish Water Research Centre, had written to gpcb about the dangers of facilities storing hazardous waste for long. But no action was reportedly taken.

beil charges factories Rs 15 per kg of hazardous waste for incineration and the money is taken in advance. That means it collected over Rs 19 crore for 12,825 tonnes of waste oil but did not treat it. Activists also point out that the fire saved the company Rs 37.50 lakh, the cost of treating 250 tonnes of waste.

What caused fire?
BEIL officials, police, district administration and even gpcb are tight-lipped about the cause.

“One of the barrels might have gone in unchecked and some reaction could have caused the explosion. However, we cannot say anything till proper investigation is done,’ said Ashok Panjwani, director, beil.

The three-member committee constituted by the district collector, who is also the head of the District Crisis Group, submitted its report on April 9. “We have been unable to find out the cause of the fire but most probably it was due to a pyrophoric reaction between steel drums and stored waste,’ Harshad Patel, sub-divisional magistrate, Ankleshwar, told Down To Earth. The report noted many safety lapses at beil: no sensor to detect gas leakage; dangerous chemicals not identified and not kept in a separate area; very few fire-fighting equipment, Patel said. “We have proposed strong action against beil under the Indian Factories Act and under environmental laws. The collector has to give directions,’ he added.

“It is beyond our power to lodge an fir against them. But we will take action under environment laws. It is obviously a case of negligence and the fire is human-induced. We will act when the actual reason is ascertained,’ said Sanjiv Tyagi, member secretary, gpcb.

Safety, what’s that?

A visit to the accident site brought more shocks. Not a single fire hydrant of the company was visible. “It took long to douse the fire because the approach road was congested and the smoke dense,’ said Kotadia. A wall in the rear of the compound had to be broken to make way for fire tenders. According to Ibrahim Patel, a medical practitioner in Jitali, the situation could have been tragic had workers been trapped inside. About 40 labourers work at the site. “There is no emergency exit in the high compound wall,’ he said.

“I came here early morning after the fire and saw people covering the oil with mud. All that will seep into the groundwater. How can they run their business in the name of safe disposal?’ asks Sheikh. Workers also complain they do not get safety masks and often feel dizzy.

At this facility where extremely toxic waste is stockpiled, instead of increased monitoring and increased safety conditions, the reverse seems to be the case. Clearly, the lessons of the Bhopal tragedy have not been learnt.