Bitter truth

Poor industrial practices and a myopic environmental policy lead to the pollution of north India's water resources.

AMAN SETHI in Bijnor and Moradabad

Officials at the Bijnor District Industrial Council give a sheepish smile as they admit that "the water from our handpumps is unfit for use". Effluents from the state-owned Uttar Pradesh Sugar Limited across the street has contaminated groundwater, and handpumps in the neighbourhood yield foul-smelling, yellowish water. Houses and offices around the sugar mill get a limited supply of municipal water drawn from aquifers more than 60 metres below the surface. Bijnor in western Uttar Pradesh's sugar country is an important stop for the distillery industry that contributed Rs.2,686 crore to the State exchequer in 2004-05 - more than any other industry. According to State government estimates released in 2002, it also provided employment to more than 8,000 people in the State. However, increasing instances of surface and groundwater pollution near the distillery sites have brought the industry into sharp focus.

Enclosed by high concrete walls, the Dhampur Sugar Mills (DSM) complex in Bijnor towers above tiny houses and lush fields in Mora village. Thanks to an abundant supply of water and molasses in the area, DSM grew from a simple distillery to a giant petrochemical plant producing ethanol derivatives such as ethyl acetate, formaldehyde, acetic acid and acetic anhydride. The plant produced oxalic acid until a year ago. Recently, it set up a biogas-fuelled power plant, which utilises some of the waste from by the mill. A report, "Environmental Performance of Alcohol Industry in Uttar Pradesh", published by the Uttar Pradesh Pollution Control Board (UPPCB), rated DSM Bijnor seventh among 33 distilleries surveyed for environmental performance.

The villagers, however, are hardly impressed. "Effluents from the distillery and chemical plant have destroyed life in the village," says Akhtari Khatoon, a 65-year-old grandmother, sitting by what used to be the village pond, now a hyacinth-choked swamp. Khatoon says the village's sole surface water source became unusable 10 years ago when the distillery began discharging waste into it. Water from the handpumps began to stink and turn yellow; it turned a deep ochre when exposed to sunlight. Children complained of stomach cramps and there were digestive tract infections, cows and buffaloes turned sterile, and milk and crop yields fell. Demonstrations staged outside the District Magistrate's office resulted in the administration installing two India Mark II handpumps.

The India Mark II handpump was developed by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in the late 1970s to draw water from borewells exceeding 30 m in depth. In Bijnor, where the water table seldom falls below 4.5 m, the Mark II has been introduced to bypass the contaminated upper layers and tap aquifers more than 55 m below the surface. DSM, for its part, agreed to supply water in tanks to the villagers every day, but has not done so for the last six months.

The pollution in Bijnor was not entirely unforeseen. A 2002 report by the Central Pollution Control Board, "Management of Distillery Wastewater", notes that "molasses-based distillery industry ... is considered one of the most polluting" and that effluents from the distilleries have high quantities of decomposable organic matter, dissolved salts and "a persistent dark brown colour". A series of directives from the Board and the Ministry of Environment and Forests have meant that distilleries are to be "zero discharge" in terms of effluence, but in many cases the damage has already been done.

"The groundwater around DSM has yielded brownish water in the past," says P.K. Aggarwal, Regional Officer of the State Pollution Control Board. "Apart from the colour, and maybe the smell, there is nothing wrong with the water." Sitting in his office in Moradabad, 100 km away from Bijnor, Aggarwal claims that the groundwater in Dhampur is perfectly safe for drinking and that the villagers "are prone to exaggeration".

However, many villagers are said to have been diagnosed with gastro-alimentary illnesses that could be caused by the polluted water. In fact, oxalic acid, manufactured by the DSM until a year ago, combines with metal ions present in the human body to form crystals that affect the kidneys and the alimentary tract. A January 2005 Supreme Court ruling holds hazardous industries responsible for the environmental fallout of their actions, but little has been done against the distillery industry. This forces communities and individuals to spend on household filtration systems or bear the medical expenses.

Chooiya Nalla, a half-hour drive from the DSM complex, is the principal cause of anguish for farmers who live near it. Originally a seasonal stream that brought monsoon run-off to Salempur village, Chooyia Nalla now is a drain for the effluents from the Mohit Petrochemicals complex - comprising a distillery, paper mill and a petrochemical plant - upstream. The State Pollution Control Board insists that the plant's effluents "at the point of discharge" are within stipulated norms. But it is unable to explain why Chooyia Nalla is a viscous black cesspool.

Even if the industry meets pollution-control standards, it would not be doing enough to protect and conserve the fast depleting freshwater resources in north India. The standards themselves need a severe overhaul. A Centre for Science and Environment report says that regulators abroad are shifting from "concentration-based standards" of water quality to "pollution load-based standards". In the latter, pollution is measured on the basis of the total amount of pollution generated per unit of production, coupled with a stringent quota system for water usage, depending on the type of industry. This helps the industry to monitor pollution and conserve water.

Regulators in India persist with concentration-based standards, which simply measure the amount of pollutants per unit of water. The trifling cost of freshwater allows the industry to clear emission standards by diluting the effluents. This fails to reduce the actual quantum of pollutants, and also encourages the wastage of freshwater.

There are no legally enforceable standards for water utilisation. According to a report of the State Pollution Control Board, DSM uses 237.84 litres of water for every litre of alcohol produced; the Central Pollution Control Board benchmark is 15 litres of water for a litre of alcohol.

Environmental regulations and legislation are among the hardest industrial rules to enforce and are often seen as detrimental to industrial growth. Recent debates in India and in multi-lateral forums look at emission standards and pollution control as instruments of the global North to curb development in the South. The realpolitik behind global environment legislation cannot be ignored; nor can the implications of a myopic environment policy and poor industrial practice.