Bucket brigade takes on polluting cos

Global Community Monitor trains people in Cuddalore's industrial area to identify the levels of pollution.

Parashuram works in the electricity office in Sangoli Kuppam village in Cuddalore's Sipkot (State Industries Promotion Corporation of Tamil Nadu) area. Shivashankar and Paramashivam work in the local panchayat office of Sangoli Kuppam.

But early in the morning on some days, one can catch them together on their cycles, with a bucket each. They are on a mission to trap the air of the industrial area in their buckets, manipulated to function like gas bags. They are the bucket brigade of Cuddalore.

There are 50 people in the group and more are joining. However, their activism does not stop here. After trapping the polluted air, they send the samples to the Columbia Analytic Laboratory in the US. The test costs Rs 25,000 and is paid by Global Community Monitor (GCM), an international agency, which has helped to develop the special buckets.

The agency has worked with many communities since 2002 on establishing successful air testing programmes.

The report of the test is then splashed in the media. Corporates concerned are then forced to take measures to rectify the problem.

The activism of the bucket brigade has been engendered by the ills the people in the area have suffered over the years since the Tamil Nadu government decided to set aside the area for industrial units.

That a river was flowing right next to the sites and that people lived on both sides did not deter the government or industry. Soon fishermen who lived off the catch from the river Uppanar discovered what would be their destiny.

Arul Selvam, one of the activists of the Sipcot Area's community environmental monitoring system and also the brain behind the bucket brigade in Sangoli Kuppam, says, "The death of an industrial worker, Radhakrishnan, was an eye opener for many. He was working with Tanfac a supplier of Fluorine chemicals.

"One day, he lost consciousness and died. Now there is no one to take care of his two children. However, the company did not respond. He died after cleaning a tank. He had inhaled sulphuric acid fumes. It was a protected area and needed skilled labour. Newer units kept opening but people were helpless as they did not know how to deal with the pollution caused by them. They had no scientific data to confront the companies with," he adds.

Selvam further says, "It was after this incident that activists like Madumita Datta and Nityanand in Chennai, who have worked with Global Community Monitor, stepped in to start community monitoring of pollution in the area.

"We identified community leaders and trained them at the Dehradun People's Science Initiative. We trained 50 people like Shivashankar and Paramashivam," says Arul.

"That was three-and-a-half years ago. Now they take samples of water in front of the community and test it for 11 parameters. The results are shown to the district pollution board and the district collector. Then we call the media," say an activist of the area.

"We did not know how to get rid of the pungent odours that was let off from the industrial units. The Global Community Monitoring network helped us to resolve the problem," Arul says.

GCM expert Denny Lawson taught people how to relate odour with pollution and find the source. "A lay man knows only about smell and smoke. He cannot link it to storage, transportation, processing and discharge," says Arul.

Now when the activists go on weekly bucket patrols, they look for smells and try to identify them, as each smell is linked to a different chemical.

"We observe the after effects of a particular odour on inhalation. And then we see if loading or unloading is happening at that time and if it is safe or not, if parking is safe or unsafe and if tanker with chemicals is parked in unsafe areas," another activist says.

He points at a ditch and says that a month ago Spic Pharma released a thick yellow discharge into it making people puke and faint.

Thankavel and Bhupathi, members of the bucket brigade, say, "Earlier we used to get a lot of fish. But not even half remains now. Fish die during the rains when more effluent is secretly released by polluting industries."

The villagers don't even have access to drinking water. "We take water from Kudikat, a neighbouring village. We don't get clean drinking water in Sangoli Kuppam," complain villagers.

One of the latest recruits in the bucket brigade of Sangoli Kuppam is Tilakavati, 33, a mother of two children. She is part of the community monitoring team, which is on its newest project: a health survey of the people of Sangoli Kuppam to document the effects of pollution in the area.

Tilakavati herself is a case study as she says she feels breathless all the time. Her children also suffer from breathlessness. "We have invested all our money in this house. How can we leave it? No one will even buy it," she says. So she has decided to join the fight rather than quit like scores of others in the village.