Bhopal still nursing over 350 tonnes of toxic waste
06 Aug 2010
Bhopal is still sitting on the 350 tonnes of toxic waste lying at the site of the Union Carbide plant despite all the sound and fury over the extradition of its erstwhile chairman Warren M Anderson.
The Madhya Pradesh government, meanwhile, managed to smuggle 40 tonnes of lime sludge from the 390 tonnes of toxic wastes at UCIL plant and dispose it at the disposal facility at Pithampur in June 2008.
Stating this in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha today, minister of state for chemicals and fertilisers Srikant Kumar Jena has admitted that government has so far failed to dispose of the remaining 350 tonnes of toxic wastes at Ankleshwar, Gujarat.
The government has since received the consent of the Supreme Court to operationalise a new incinerator at Pithampur, MP to get the remaining wastes incinerated.
The government, meanwhile, accepted the recommendations of the group of ministers (GoM) and established an oversight committee in the ministry of environment and forests to facilitate disposal of the toxic waste.
The Government of India is also yet to decide on who bears the cost of the clean-up and claim damages on the principle of 'polluter pays', he said.