The Bombay High Court today asked the authorities to consider shifting stockpiles of coal at Haji Bunder Port here to some other port in Maharashtra or Gujarat to eliminate the risk it poses to local people's health.
The suggestion was given by a bench of Justices V M Kanade and Reveti Mohite-Dere which was hearing a PIL alleging health hazards due to dumping of coal at Haji Bunder Port in South Mumbai.
The Judges were of the view that the coal stock should either be shifted to another port in Maharashtra or adjoining Gujarat or covered to prevent it from polluting the atmosphere.
The PIL, filed by Meera Sanyal, former CEO of Royal Bank of Scotland in India, pointed out that 1.5 lakh metric tonnes of imported coal had been kept on 19 acres of land at Haji Bunder Port.
The coal has posed a health hazard to the people and should either be removed or covered with some material to ensure that it is not exposed to atmosphere, the PIL urged.
The Judges asked Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB) and Mumbai Port Trust to file affidavits in reply to the petition and posted the matter for hearing on December 16.
The petition alleged that residents of the area have been protesting for years, giving proof of recurrent bouts of ill health and deaths due to respiratory disease and accidents on the sludge-filled roads. But six years of complaints to the police, corporators, MLAs and MPs have fallen on deaf ears.
The petition further said inhaling coal dust causes black lung disease, an illness mainly associated with miners, but which is afflicting many people in the city.
The petitioner contended that people can neither absorb nor exhale this dust as it causes irreversible lung damage, leading to potentially fatal respiratory diseases like emphysema, bronchitis, asthma, tuberculosis and lung cancer.
