The visible part of the waste to go to Germany first, buried part in next phase
The 350 tonnes of toxic waste dumped on the premises of the erstwhile Union Carbide factory in Bhopal would be flown to Germany to be incinerated, either there or in any other part of Europe in line with the proposal of GIZ, the German state agency.
Yesterday’s cabinet approval of the proposal marks a milestone in the nearly three-decade wait to clean the 32-acre site housing remnants of the toxic pesticides left by the company after the industrial disaster there in end-1984.
However, there is little hope yet for the unknown quantities of toxins that would remain on the premises after the removal of these 350 tonnes.
“We are told there are 25,000 to 50,000 tonnes of toxic waste on the premises. But that is not our concern,’’ an expert from GIZ said. The ball was in the court of the Madhya Pradesh government, which is yet to sign a contract with GIZ, he said.
The method of disposal has been finalised. Hans-Hermann Dube, a GIZ expert on the subject, told this paper today the waste would be incinerated either in Germany itself or any part of Europe. “Once we get a signature on the agreement, we will open the tender in Europe and identify the best deal to incinerate the waste.”
GIZ does not foresee any citizen resistance in Europe. “Germany gets three million tonnes of waste every year,” said Dube, and 350 tonnes was as good as zero. Besides, he said, his experts had tested the waste and found it ‘lightly toxicated’ and probably totally unrelated to the Carbide gas leak.
GIZ has offered to remove the waste in a year at a cost of euro 3.5 million or close to Rs 25 crore, which the cabinet approved yesterday as the cost of the project. “Based on the UN's comprehensive regulations for the safe and responsible disposal of contaminated waste, a timeframe of one year is planned for the project. Once the soil has been adequately protected, transportation could commence at the start of 2013 at the earliest,’’ said GIZ.
GIZ's offer to dispose of the contaminated soil is in keeping with the Basel Convention controlling trans-boundary movements of hazardous wastes and their disposal, designed to prevent their transfer from developed to less developed countries. The convention calls for toxic waste to be shipped to another country in cases where the technology to dispose of it properly is lacking at the local level.
In the past two decades, GIZ has taken on 25 similar commissions in developing and transition countries, the agency says.
The 350 tonnes that are being removed were picked up in 2005 and kept in bags in a warehouse by the state authorities. The rest remain buried in open pits in the premises, says Rachna Dhingra, an activist who has moved the apex court to take a broader view of the waste.
While GIZ will charge close to Rs 25 crore to remove 350 tonnes, the total cost of soil decontamination has been estimated at somewhere between Rs . 78 crore and Rs . 117 crore by the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute.
Bhopal’s rescuers
GIZ, the German state agency to take out the toxic waste at Carbide, has much experience in safely disposing such hazardous stuff. For instance:
Mozambique: Highly toxic stockpiled pesticides shipped to Wales and England, together with the barrels and contaminated soil, and disposed in special high-temperature incineration plants;
Mexico: GIZ advised the government and local authorities on redeveloping a contaminated site at Aguascalientes. Rail workshops had contaminated the soil and groundwater over many decades. The 88-hectare site was redeveloped after removing toxic wastes and thousands of tonnes of heavy metals to landfills. The site was redeveloped into a park.
