Interstate dirty dumpers
Seventy kilometres from Bangalore, a lorry veered off the main road and headed in an unusual direction: towards groundnut fields in Yadagere village of Karnataka's Tumkur district. It stopped at an unsown field in the middle of nowhere. Torches were flashing in the dark. A flurry of activities followed, disturbing the midnight quiet. Some people jumped out of the lorry and began offloading barrels after barrels. Others with spades and shovels emptied them into 10-foot-deep pits in the field. They covered the pits with soil and disappeared in the darkness.
They always came at night. And this had been going on for the past one year. But no one knew who they were and where they came from. When a stinking, tarry liquid oozed to the surface last summer, people discovered that the lorries had been dumping hazardous waste oil. The land, twice the size of a football field, belongs to Thimmaiha, who does not stay in the village anymore.He had leased it out to Riyaz, a scrap dealer from a nearby village.
Fearing that the sludge would destroy the surrounding farms, the villagers complained to the police several times, but each time the police turned them away. Their fears were not unfounded. About six months ago, water in a borewell near Thimmaiha's field started turning yellow. "We knew where the filth was coming from. Even while tilling I fear some poisonous substance will turn up,' says Narasappa, who owns the borewell. Now the well pumps up nothing but sludgy, black water that cannot be used for irrigating his half-a-hectare of groundnut field. Five other borewells in the area risk contamination.
Lab tests done at the Department of Mines and Geology, Bangalore, described the water in Narasappa's borewell as having a "strong acid smell' and revealed that it contained lead and aluminium, which affect the nervous system. "Groundwater in this area is 150 feet below, therefore, it took a long time for it to be contaminated. Otherwise by now the oil would have percolated to more borewells in the surrounding fields,' says Ramesh D Nayak, regional environment officer, Tumkur.
Yadagere is a water-scarce area, so the farmers formed a group called Jala Samavardhana Yojana Sangha to tackle the threat. In July this year they approached the regional branch of the state pollution control board (pcb). Investigation began. And what it revealed is a game of clever deception, a shockingly callous handling of hazardous waste and a criminal circumventing of laws. The origin of the waste oil was traced to the sipcot industrial complex in Cuddalore, Tamil Nadu. The consignments changed so many hands before reaching Thimmaiha's field that the authorities have no direct evidence to nail the culprits who sent the waste to Yadagere.
It all began in 2004 when waste dealer Sheikh Afroze contacted Riyaz with the proposal of dumping industrial waste on the leased field. Riyaz agreed because he thought he could make money by selling the barrels. About a year ago the activity picked up. "They dug six pits, all 10 feet deep, and dumped waste in them,' says Narasappa. pcb figures show that 47 barrels of waste were dumped at the site. One barrel contains 80-100 litres of waste. But the villagers say four-five lorries came in the past one year alone. Considering that one truck contains a minimum of 35 barrels, at least 140 barrels must have been dumped in the area. Six bald patches in the field, covered with solidified tar, stand testimony to that.
Afroze bought the waste from various factories in and around Karnataka to dump it in Tumkur. Investigation revealed that most of the waste came from two factories, Tagross Chemicals India Ltd and Shasun Drugs and Chemicals in sipcot industrial area.
Apart from this, Afroze said, he bought waste from Somasundaram Polish Works in Puducherry and Super Petroleum Products in Taloja Industrial Estate, Raigad, Maharashtra. Curiously, Taloja