CHENNAI: In a shocking revelation, it was found that the oil sludge removed from the city’s shores during the oil spill clean-up were buried in pits close to the sea in fishing hamlets north of here.
The huge oil spill on January 28 from the vessel MT Dawn Kancheepuram was due to its collision with British flagged ship BW Maple in Ennore on Kamarajar Port’s channel. It loomed as an environmental disaster as oil and tar balls accumulated along the city’s shoreline extended up to Muttukadu in the south.
Spearheaded by the Coast Guard, the clean-up operations were carried out by a host of agencies with volunteers from local fishermen and students.
Officials had said the removed oil sludge would be dumped inside the Kamarajar Port in Ennore and treated with microbes for a bio-remediation process. However, when we visited KVK Kuppam, a fishing hamlet near Kasimedu, at least seven pits were found near the sea in which the removed oil spill were buried.
“We don’t know who dumped the sludge into the pits,” said a contractual employee of Dariya Shipping, which owns MT Dawn Kancheepuram. Seven drums, each of 20 litres, were lying on the shore. The spot was just 2 km from Bharathi Nagar, the worst affected by the oil spill.
Fishermen are worried that dumping oil sludge will make the entire cleaning process a futile exercise. “The sludge will mix with the sea again during high tides. This will again lead to a crisis,” said Srikanth,
On Friday, a group of fishermen from the KVK Kuppam area, led by a councillor, stopped the clean-up operations at Bharathi Nagar, demanding officials to first clear the dumped oil sludge.
“We have not carried out any work since some local goons (fishermen) stopped us on Friday,” said an official of Viraj Clean Sea Enterprises, one of the companies contracted to undertake the clean-up operations by Dariya Shipping. “We have to clean the rocks by using hot water and high jet pressure cleaner. But the entire operation has been put on hold,” he said.
Meanwhile, no official from the Indian Coast Guard was at to be seen. Despite repeated phone calls, senior Coast Guard officials could not be reached for comments.
The shore at KVK Kuppam was full of tar balls and a thick layer of oil. “It is a cover-up and not a clean-up. Their intent is just to get the job done somehow,” said environmentalist Nityanand Jayaraman. “Where are Pollution Control Board officials who have to oversee the entire operations? If it is being done under the watch of board officials, then they are guilty. Else it is a case of negligence on their part,” said Jayaraman.
Indian Oil Corporation’s deputy general manager (Research and Development) S K Puri, one of the two scientists to supervise the treatment process in Kamarajar Port, said dumping the oil sludge in pits would exponentially increase the time required for the bio-remediation process. “The collected oil sludge must immediately be taken to the port for treating with microbes,” he added.
“The bio-remediation process will take three to four months. But if they dump it in pits, then it would take more than two to three years to get it treated and it could pose a threat to environment,” Puri said.