CPCB, TN pollution board seem to differ on Sterlite's Tuticorin smelter

Unlike the cannot-be-allowed stand of the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board on the copper smelting unit of Sterlite Industries at Tuticorin, the Central Pollution Control Board seems to take a different view.

During a hearing on the issue in the Supreme Court today, the report of the CPCB on the issue was not made public but given to the judges during the proceedings. However, when the counsel for Sterlite stated CPCB had cleared the unit, there was no objection from the central body.

The Union ministry of environment and forests, represented by Solicitor General Gopal Subramanium, did not disclose its stand and sought time to reply to the affidavits to be filed by the different parties to the appeal. The next hearing is on February 24.

Last year, the company had got a reprieve when the SC stayed the closure order issued by the high court at Chennai. The HC had directed the plant, on the coast, 580 km south from Chennai, to be shut for violating environmental norms. The company appealed to the SC, which gave a stay on October 1.

The company was charged with functioning within 25 km of the coast, violating the environmental regulations, and without having developed a green belt 250-metre wide around the plant, which had been insisted upon by the TNPCB while earlier granting a no-objection certificate.

The HC order noted the unit had been set up amid protests from the local people. The pollution was unabated and should be stopped at least now. “The materials on record show that the continuing air pollution being caused by the noxious effluents discharged into the air by the respondent company is having a devastating effect on the people living in the surroundings,” the order said.

Today, the state board told a bench chaired by Justice R V Raveendran that the company, part of the UK-based Vedanta group, had breached environmental standards on four aspects.

First, the raw materials were exposed. Second, solid state waste disposal procedures were not satisfactory. Third, fugitive gas emissions. Fourth, the company had not complied with the condition that a green belt had to be built around the factory. Only 25 per cent of the green belt is in existence, stated TNPCB counsel Altaf Ahmad.

Sterlte, however, said it had not only complied with the environmental conditions but was prepared to go beyond. “Ours will be a state-of-the-art facility, more than what is suggested by the state and central boards,” company counsel C A Sundaram said. He also argued the adverse reports were based on the conditions obtaining in 1997 and there were no violations of rules for the past 15 years.