PARADIP: A review meeting between officials of the district administration and industries, especially those dealing with hazardous substances, to assess safety and maintenance features at their ammonia and chlorine plants, was held here on Saturday.
Collector Sangram Keshari Mohapatra along with ADM, Paradip Kanhu Charan Dhir interacted with officials of PPL, IFFCO, IOCL and other industries to assess the maintenance and other safety measures at their units.
The recent gas leak incident at LG Polymers plant at Visakhapatnam has prompted the district administration to initiate preventive measures to avert similar mishaps in the area.
The State has 35 major hazardous industries of which eight-PPL, IFFCO, Paradip Refinery, ICOL, LPG terminal, IOCL terminal, HPCL and BPCL terminal and Paradip-Halida-Barunei pipeline, are based in Paradip.
Besides, the port town is also home to other major industries like Essar Steel, Goa Carbon, Paradip Calciner and Adani Wilmar Limited along with 20 ice factories and three prawn processing units.
Since most of these industries are not functioning due to the lockdown, it has led to apprehensions of gas leak when operations are restarted. The authorities of the industries were asked to ensure maintenance of their plants to avert any eventuality.
Leakage of ammonia gas was reported from Oswal Chemicals and Fertilisers Ltd (now IFFCO plant) after the super cyclone of 1999.
Due to disruption of power supply, the plant’s water cooling system had failed causing increase in temperature inside the ammonia storage tanks. In order to prevent rupture of tanks, the industry officials had released ammonia to the atmosphere in a controlled manner and this had led to panic among locals.
The district administration had decided to set up an Emergency Response Centre (ERC) in Paradip to handle industrial disasters.
The centre was supposed to function from the ADM office. However, lack of infrastructure has kept the proposal in the back burner.