Water pollution
M C Mehta vs Union of India: The case related to tanneries along the banks of the Ganga discharging untreated waste into the river. Para 14 of the judgement stated that just as an industry that could not afford to pay minimum wages could not be allowed to exist, so also an industry that could not treat its effluents and curb environmental damage could not be allowed to exist. The tanneries pleaded lack of resources to set up effluent treatment plants at which the Court accepted a scheme for common treatment plants for clusters of tanneries. Later the Supreme Court ordered closure of the tanneries that had not complied with its earlier ruling.
M C Mehta vs Union of India (1988): A case against the Kanpur municipality for discharging untreated wastes into the Ganga. The Court ordered all municipalities along the river to undertake cleaning on a war footing, filing regular reports of progress made
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Attakoya Thangal vs Union of India (1990): A petition against the tapping of ground water in Lakshadweep. The Court relied on studies conducted by the National Environment Engineering Research Institute and the Centre for Earth Science Studies which confirmed the petitioner's apprehension that using mechanical pumps to draw water would deplete ground water and increase salinity in wells
Subhashkumar vs State of Bihar (1991): A petition against Tisco discharging slurry/ sludge into the Bokaro river. Interestingly, the court discovered that this was not really a case of public interest. The case had been filed to avenge the petitioner's loss of contract to transport and dispose off coal and slurry.
Raju Rajiv Singh vs State of Bihar (1992): This was a petition against a distillery and a chemical company. The Pollution Control Board was hauled up for inaction and dereliction of duty, and the Court ordered to stop discharge or face closure. The chemical plant immediately put in place clean technology while the distillery sought more time to raise money to effect changes
Air pollution:
M C Mehta and Anr vs Union of India/ Shriram Food and Fertiliser Industries and others: Mehta filed a writ petition in public interest apprehending a leak as the equipment in the caustic chlorine and sulphur units was in a shambles. But this was ignored. Subsequently, with the oleum leaked and the death of one person, the district magistrate granted the company seven days to remove dangerous substances from the premises under Section 133 of the Criminal Procedure Code.
Both management and labour protested closure, till finally the plant was allowed to reopen subject to weekly inspections, periodic health examinations and the instituting of a safety committee for workers.
The very next order, though, diluted the court's stringent stand. The company pleaded that the condition requiring occupiers/officers to undertake personal liability for accident would create problems for recruitments in the company. They also argued that the safety committee did not make sense since the workers were uneducated.
Two detailed orders later, M C Mehta filed a writ petition under Article 32 of the Constitution for minimum compulsory insurance commensurate with damage caused.
Green card incentives
Green ratings are gaining credence as a way of encouraging companies to turn environment friendly.
The World Bank called it the reputational incentive programme. Since profits may not always come the way of companies turning green, the effective tool to make them fall in line with green diktats was incentives to make them look better than their competitors. And what better incentive than a premium green reputation -- a name that suggested a company that cared for the future of the earth and inter-generational equity.
Thus was born the idea of the green rating project. It built images, developed brand loyalties on environment-friendly grounds. The first to have a go at this project was a US-based public interest research organisation, the Council for Economic Priorities (CERP) based in New York. The organisation undertakes an environmental rating of companies based on information provided by the companies themselves and the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI), which is a US government database on pollution generated by different industries.
In the eastern part of the world, it was the Indonesian government that first undertook a rating of the companies in that country. In this case, however, only the rating was made public, not the data on the basis of which it was arrived at. The World Bank part-funded the Indonesian project.
In India it has long been felt that there are no bouquets for firms that have adopted state-of-the-art pollution control technology. If there is appreciation, it is never really publicised. On the other hand, offending industries are not pelted with brickbats either. There is hardly any public pressure blacklisting companies that are spewing pollutants into the environment.
Hence the idea of a jumping the green rating bandwagon. The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) and the Tata Energy Research Institute (Teri) were the two prime movers of the project, which is set to take off soon. The idea is to control firms within each sector after detailed studies to establish the parameters for such comparison. Public announcements of ratings are expected to go a long way towards increasing awareness among the public and give companies a run for their money.
There is hardly any public pressure blacklisting companies that are spewing pollutants into the environment