BENGALURU: Rising air pollution, lack of pulmonologists and health facilities, and absence of proper air quality monitoring facility is forcing people in villages in the heart of the mining hub of Sandur in Ballari district to consider relocating for their survival.
Sandur has no air quality monitoring station, while the one that the Karnataka State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB) manages manually at Kuvempunagar, a locality in Ballari city, is almost 50 km from Sandur. The regional laboratory assessing data is in Raichur, almost 200 km from Sandur.
A KSPCB official said, “A proposal to set up a vehicle-mounted, automated air pollution monitoring centre at Sandur has been approved, but it is yet to be set up.”
Dr Basa Reddy N, a surgeon at Ballari District Hospital, said an increasing number of people in and around Sandur are complaining of breathing problems and lung infections. A district health officer said, “Cases of people complaining of allergies and lung infections are rising. There is a need for specialised equipment to test and treat people with respiratory infections. But hospitals in the district, let alone the primary health centres (PHCs), have no such facilities. We have to send them to Ballari.”
As the air monitoring centre is so far away from Sandur, the report prepared by KSPCB shows the Air Quality Index (AQI) between “good” and “satisfactory” category (24-63) and Particulate Matter-10 (PM-10) between 24-128 micrograms per metre cube. This gives no accurate status of the prevailing levels of air pollution that people in and around Sandur are exposed to.
Around 30 per cent of India’s iron ore comes from Ballari
An official from the Karnataka Mining Environment Restoration Corporation (KMERC) told The New Indian Express, “KMERC has been approving projects work as per the Comprehensive Environment Plan for Mining Impact Zone (CEPMIZ), but health programmes are delayed because of financial issues in sanctioning posts. KMERC’s priority is setting up of PHCs, but we are unable to do so as no doctors have been sanctioned. There is also a proposal to upgrade the taluk hospital, but there is a shortage of specialists, especially pulmonologists.”
Around 30% of India’s iron ore comes from Ballari, and on any day, six to seven million tonnes are transported by road. “Trucks carrying heavy loads of ore moving through untarred and poorly maintained roads is a big concern as mining dust flies around. Not just people staying within 500-1,000-metre radius of the mining areas that are affected, even those staying kilometres downhill are suffering from health issues,” said a KMERC official.
It has been going on for years. In 2022, CEPMIZ was approved after the Supreme Court directed officials to improve the living condition and to provide facilities to villages around the mining areas. An oversight authority was also constituted in 2022-23, and a retired Supreme Court Judge, Justice Sudershan Reddy, was appointed as its head. Also, Rs 24,996.71 crore was allocated to KMERC to execute projects.
According to KMERC, around 30 state government departments are involved in implementing the approved projects as per CEPMIZ. Yet, work orders for only Rs 1,234.76 crore have been issued so far, of which Rs 52.38 crore is for health and family welfare.
A retired forest department official, privy to the Sandur mining operations but requesting anonymity, said: “There is a clear violation of Supreme Court directions in monitoring air quality and providing facilities to villagers around mining areas. It is also surprising that there is no Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) monitoring station in the region. In all, 1,730 villages of 10 taluks in four districts where mining takes place are directly under CEMPIZ regulations — Ballari, Chitradurga, Vijayanagara and Tumakuru.”