Amnesty International has lambasted Vedanta Resources, the London-based mining company, for violating the human rights of local communities, including their right to water, food, health and work by operating a heavily polluting alumina refinery in Lanjigarh, Orissa.
In a report released today, Amnesty came down heavily on the Indian authorities, too, accusing them of having given the local people little or far from accurate information about the potential impact of the one-million-tonne refinery.
The refinery along with a 75-Mw thermal power station is operated by the company’s subsidiary, Vedanta Aluminium Ltd (VAL). An application to expand its capacity to six million tonnes (mt) is pending with the government after an incomplete public hearing was held on the expansion plan in February last year.
Based on a series of visits made to Lanjigarh by an Amnesty team starting in 2008, the report, Don’t Mine Us out of Existence: Bauxite Mine and Refinery Devastate Lives in India, focuses on the water and air pollution that is threatening the health of the villagers in the area. It catalogues the notices and findings sent by the Orissa State Pollution Control Board (OSPCB) and the company’s ‘repeated failure’ to address these problems in a timely manner.
Around 4,000 people living near the refinery are facing serious health problems because “they are breathing polluted air and drinking water from a contaminated river, the Vamsadhara, that is one of their primary sources of water,” says Ramesh Gopalakrishnan, Amnesty’s chief researcher on South Asia. The report documents the pollution and the testimonies of villagers who say the pollution is responsible for the severe skin and respiratory ailments they are suffering from.
But Vedanta says the claims made by Amnesty are not correct and its “report is based on documents already reviewed by the Supreme Court.” Speaking to Business Standard, Mukesh Kumar, chief operating of the alumina refinery, maintains that the refinery is “inspected by OSPCB every month and we submit compliance reports every month”. According to him, it is the only alumina refinery in the country that is a zero discharge facility.
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In an official statement, the company said Amnesty had “directly challenged the credibility and robustness of India’s regulatory framework” by making “wide-ranging allegations” in its report.
The environmental pollution caused by the refinery’s fly ash and red mud ponds was reported by Business Standard (Killing them ever so softly, July 11, 2009) in a story that relied on recurring directives issued by OSPCB. A company spokesman had said at the time that its zero discharge system meant that no waste/effluent was released outside the plant by it red-mud pond or fly-ash pond. As such there was no contamination of any natural stream or river due to discharge of fly ash.
Kumar admitted today that there had been seepage, not leakage, from its red-mud pond as pointed out by OSPCB . “In any effluent pond, red mud or fly ash, there is always some seepage in the beginning. That has been addressed now. In any case, the Vamsadhara is not close to these ponds,” he claims. According to the COO, the red-mud pond is about 1 km from the river and the fly-ash ponds about 500 metres away.
“I don’t understand why Amnesty has written this report when we have shown them all the documents over a 10-hour meeting with them last year,” says Kumar. Amnesty’s contention is that the planned six-fold expansion of the refinery has serious implications for the human rights of local communities, including their rights to water, food, health, work and an adequate standard of living. “Local communities have received little or no accurate information on the refinery, its proposed expansion or the mining project. Processes to assess the impact of the projects on local communities have been wholly inadequate, and both the state and national governments have failed to respect and protect the human rights of communities as required under international human rights law.”
The Amnesty report comes just four days after the Church of England pulled out its investment from Vedanta Resources citing similar concerns. Last Friday, a spokesman for the Church’s Ethical Investment Advisory Group had said that “after six months of engagement, we are not satisfied that Vedanta has shown, or is likely in future to show, the level of respect for human rights and local communities that we expect of companies in whom the Church investing bodies hold shares.” Although the Church’s funds in the company are minuscule (L2.5 million), its action is seen as a serious blow to the FTSE 100 company controlled by mining magnate Anil Agarwal. Kumar says he is disappointed with the Church’s decision since the “company has always involved the local community in decision-making”.
Amnesty says it is awaiting the response of Jairam Ramesh, Minister of Environment and Forests, and the Orissa Chief Secretary Tarun Kanti Mishra to whom the report was sent on January 19. There have been no responses from either of them to draft reports sent in November 2009. The Vedanta COO has, meanwhile, sent the company’s response to the Amnesty report to the Orissa government.