HYDERABAD: How long can a company violate laws, pollute the environment with a carcinogenic compound and yet continue to operate without facing any repercussions? In Hyderabad, this period appears to be 15 years.
It has come to notice that a 30-year-old listed chemical company, Vishnu Chemicals Ltd, which has its unit at Gaddapotharam on outskirts of Hyderabad, has not lifted 2 lakh tonnes of hazardous waste in the landfill outside the industry’s premises.
This waste continues to pollute the land with hexavalent chromium, despite the company being ordered to clear it all way back in 2005 by the Andhra Pradesh Pollution Control Board. The company has serially ignored orders and notices issued by the APPCB and later by the Telangana PCB.
Over the years, various committees were formed and studies conducted but a nonchalant Vishnu Chemicals, which manufactures various chromium compounds, has not bothered to lift the waste and get it processed at the hazardous waste processing unit located nearby at Dundigal.
Earlier studies commissioned by the Pollution Control Board, have detected hexavalent chromium contamination in the soil surrounding the area where the hazardous waste is stored, to be as high as 3,000 times the prescribed limit of 0.5mg/L.
The Telangana State Pollution Control Board, last month, on June 23, issued a notice to the chemical company that it must lift the two lakh tonnes of hazardous waste and send it to the hazardous waste disposal facility in Dundigal.
The PCB also directed the firm to furnish an action plan within 15 days. TSPCB took up the matter after an advocate and environmentalist, Damodar Reddy Pakanati raised the issue. The advocate said that another company named Deccan Chromate which had similarly violated norms and contaminating the environment with hexavalent chromium, was closed down. But no such action had been taken against Vishnu Chemicals.
Soil contaminated
The hexavalent chromium contamination in the soil surrounding the area where the waste is stored, is 3,000 times higher than the prescribed limit of 0.5mg/L