“It was raining
heavily that day. The wall, which was in poor condition, collapsed at four in the evening.
People living in nearby areas panicked. Many animals got washed away. The
thud was so loud that we felt as if the dam itself had collapsed,” said Chitranjan
Giri, a social worker, who lives in Shahpur village in Sonbhadra district in
Uttar Pradesh.
On October
6, 2019, the dyke (boundary wall of a water body) of a fly ash pond at a power
plant of the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) in Singrauli district of
Madhya Pradesh breached, causing spillage in several acres of land.
After the dyke
collapsed, fly ash — ash produced in small dark flecks by the burning of
powdered coal – from the power plant spilled into the nearby Rihand dam, which
is the largest dam in India by volume and is located at Pipri in Sonbhadra
district in Uttar Pradesh.
As a result
of this, more than 20 lakh people living in Sonbhadra in Uttar Pradesh and
Singrauli in Madhya Pradesh are drinking toxic water, which could possibly
increase the risk of cancer in people. This poisonous water is flowing into
fields thus damaging crops.
When Gaon
Connection visited this dam, the reporter had to seek permission from the authorities as the movement of people had been restricted. Big chunks of fly
ash were still floating in the dam and workers were trying to remove them.
On October 6, 2019, the dyke of a fly ash pond at a power plant of the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) in Singrauli district of Madhya Pradesh breached.
“Fly ash
causes Asthma, TB, cancer”
According to
the National Green Tribunal (NGT) — a statutory body set up in 2010 by the NGT
Act to handle cases related to environmental issues — heavy minerals such as arsenic,
silica, aluminium and iron are present in fly ash, which causes asthma,
discomfort in lungs, tuberculosis and even cancer.
There are 10
coal-based power plants in Singrauli and Sonbhadra, located between Uttar
Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh border.
Ashwani
Kumar Dubey, an environment expert, who is also an advocate in the Supreme Court,
said: “This particular power plant generates a total of 21,000 MW electricity.
It consumes nearly 10.3 crore ton of coal per year. This per-year consumption
produces nearly 3.5 crore ton of fly ash. There is no way to dispose of this fly
ash.”
He added: “The
NGT couldn’t find a place to dump this fly ash. As per its order, it was
supposed to start disposing of ash in the vacant fields of Northern Coalfields, a
subsidiary of Coal India, which has its headquarters in Singrauli, but they did
not wish to do. The dyke collapsed because of fly ash, which was in bulk.”
Soon after the
incident, many rallies and protests were organized. A petition has been filed
against the NTPC in the high court.
Chitranjan
Giri, the social worker, said: “The air here is polluted. After this incident,
people who used to drink water from the Rihand dam are too scared to consume
this water. We had informed the NTPC officials that fly ash is getting drained
into the Rihand dam, but they didn’t take it seriously. This could have been
stopped, but authorities behaved carelessly.”
However,
when contacted, Lalmani Pandey, assistant manager at NTPC Vindhyachal, had a
different story to tell. “Soon after the dyke collapsed, debris started flowing.
The situation was beyond anybody’s control. There was a drain on the way
because of which the fly ash got deposited in the Rihand reservoir. While there
was no loss of life, NTPC Vindhyachal has suffered huge losses.”
He added that
more than 50% of fly ash has been washed away thanks to the reservoir. Whatever
is left, it is being removed.
Soon after the incident, many rallies and protests were organized.
The Sonbhadra-Singrauli
belt is prone to accidents
In August,
five children were rescued and more than 500 farmers in Madhya Pradesh suffered
crop losses after a mud wall of a fly-ash dyke of Essar Energy’s thermal power
plant in Singrauli district collapsed during heavy rain.
RS Parihar,
the regional officer of the Madhya Pradesh Pollution Control Board, said: “The
recent tragedy is bigger than the Essar tragedy. The only source of water in
the region has been affected. The dyke was very old, the reason why it
collapsed. Nearly 35 lakh metric ton of fly ash made its way through the drains
into the Rihand dam. This could harm nature in many ways. It could also affect
groundwater.”
However, countering
this, environmental expert, Ashwani Dubey said, “The maximum limit of the dyke
is 35 lakh metric ton. The boundary of the dam was raised five times. This
means around one crore metric ton ash is deposited in the Rihand reservoir.”
He added: “This
toxic fly ash was directly disposed-off in the Rihand reservoir. This dam,
built over the Renuka river, is the only source of water for more than 20 lakh
people in Sonbhadra and Singrauli. This river meets the Son river, which merges
with the Ganga in the end. Just imagine, how dangerous the whole chain is. The future
generations are going to suffer the consequences of this tragedy.”
More than 20 lakh people living in Sonbhadra in Uttar Pradesh and Singrauli in Madhya Pradesh are drinking toxic water
According to
the NGT, 1,800-ton fly ash is produced while generating one-megawatt of electricity.
In India, 0.3 million-ton ash was utilized in 1991-1992; the number stood at 26.03
million ton in 2010-11. In 2016, 120 million metric ton fly ash was produced.
As per the estimates, the number could go up to 150 million metric ton in 2020.
Ajay
Chaturvedi, an environmentalist and founder of Paardarshi Bhaarat Civil Society,
an NGO, told Gaon Connection that minerals like silica, aluminium, boron,
arsenic, calcium oxide, chromium, particulate matter (pm) 2.5 and black carbon
are present in this fly ash which makes it toxic. These minerals pollute the air
in the vicinity of 20 km. It is also making water in rivers, drains and ponds
toxic.
Narayan
Vishvakarma, who has been fighting against illegal mining, deforestation, and
increasing pollution from past five years in Singrauli said: “When there were
no dams here, the water table was already low. But after the construction of
Rihand dam, though the water level remained constant, but it turned toxic. Although
water from the Rihand dam is not reaching people directly, but it’s being used
for irrigation.”
The National
Green Tribunal, on October 11, 2019, had ordered coal mines as well as
coal-based thermal power stations operating in the critically polluted Singrauli
area to pay a fine of Rs 79 crore.
But is this
enough?
