Sterlite typifies all that's wrong with environmental governance in india

Sterlite employs around 3,500 people directly and claims to provide employment to 35,000 indirectly through its business transactions. The plant produces 36 per cent of the copper used in

India and a shutdown might have an impact not just on the copper industry but also on many manufacturing industries, like automotive. But if its industrial importance and criticality to the

region’s economy is true, so is the adverse health impact it has had on the people of the region. A report, titled “Health Status and Epidemiological Study Around 5 km Radius of Sterlite

Industries (India) Limited, Thoothukudi”, published by the Tirunelveli Medical College in 2008, states that 50 per cent of the people of the region die of diseases and chronic illnesses and

around 50 per cent women are anaemic. It also adds that 49 per cent schoolchildren are underweight and 41 per cent are stunted. “Women in the villages around Sterlite, some of them just 35

years old, have undergone operations to get their uteruses removed for fear of infections. Many have undergone abortions because the baby could not survive in the womb,” says Rani (name

changed) from Kumare-diyapuram. On multiple accounts people have complained to the authorities of health problems like breathing disorders, skin and eye ailments, miscarriages and even

cancer. Copper smelting causes air, water and land pollution. The process releases sulphur dioxide gas, a known pollutant that causes respiratory ailments. The Tirunelveli Medical College

report found that 13 per cent people suffered respiratory ailments, which is much higher than the rate in the nearby areas. The smelting process also releases radon, iron, manganese, lead,

arsenic, nitrates and fluorides, which reach the water sources and the soil through the industrial slag. Apart from the usual contamination in the smelting process, the plant has seen 27

industrial accidents and gas leaks between 1997 and 2013, says Jayaraman. THE FLIP-FLOP _Inconsistencies in NEERI reports have helped Sterlite escape accountability _ “Despite all its

faults, Sterlite has managed to stay running by paying money to the powers that be,” claims Fatima Babu, a Thoothukudi-based environmentalist who has been protesting against the company

since 1995 (see ‘Surviving despite violations’). A case in point is NEERI, which has conducted five studies (in 1998,1999, 2003,2005 and 2011) on the environmental impacts of the Sterlite

plant in Thoothukudi and come up with different results. The first of these was conducted on the direction of the Madras High Court and submitted to the court in November 1998. The court was

hearing a petition filed by the National Trust for Clean Environment, a non-profit that does not exist any more, in 1996 against pollution caused by Sterlite in the district. This report

clearly stated the environmental norms flouted by Sterlite in the construction of the plant. First, the plant was built 14 km from the Gulf of Mannar Marine National Park, while the mandated

distance from an eco sensitive zone for a hazardous industry like copper smelting should have been, as per NEERI, more than 25 km. The report also found that Sterlite had somehow convinced

TNPCB to reduce the green belt required around a hazardous polluting plant from 250 m to just 25 m. But months after the first report, in February 1999, NEERI gave a clean chit to Sterlite,

in its second Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) report, though it had found more than permissible amounts of groundwater pollutants like lead, cadmium, selenium, arsenic, magnesium and

copper in and around the factory. Arsenic, for instance, was found almost 20 times the permissible limit in water samples taken from borewells and dugwells. “This was the beginning of a

bonanza for NEERI. An RTI query filed with NEERI shows that Sterlite paid the institute R1.27 crore between 1999 and 2007 for preparing EIA reports,” says Jayaraman (see ‘Running with

Sterlite, hunting with courts’). NEERI prepared three EIA reports in this duration—in 1999, 2003 and 2005. “None of these were as harsh on the company as the 1998 report, which was conducted

on the order of the Madras High Court and for which NEERI did not receive any money from Sterlite,” adds Jayaraman. The judgement in the 1996 case came in September 2010 and the Madras High

Court ordered the closure of the plant. Sterlite appealed against the decision in the Supreme Court and got a stay within three days. The Supreme Court again directed NEERI to conduct

another assessment of the site, which it did and submitted the report in June 2011. Remarkably, in the “Observations” section of the report, NEERI stated that it did not find any marker

pollutants, like arsenic, zinc and fluoride in the ground water samples it tested, while the data provided in the same study showed that fluorides were in more than permissible levels in six

of 12 samples from piezometric wells. In one sample, fluorides were almost twice the permissible limit.