Bhopal’s ‘pond of poison’ reaps new worry
BHOPAL: At first glance, it is just another pond, as big as four football fields taken together, but, like all city ponds, muddy, with garbage and sewage collected on the borders.
But this is no ordinary pond: it is a toxic reminder of the 1984 Bhopal Gas Tragedy that killed at least 2,200 people (the death toll is still disputed). And after 37 years, it is once again making news for the wrong reason. Water chestnuts are being grown in the pond, and there are fears that the produce could be toxic.
The 5.82-acre waterbody in the Chhola Road area of Bhopal, right next to the Blue Moon Colony, right next to the Union Carbide plant where the accident happened, was actually used as a “solar evaporation pond” by the company that is believed to have dumped several tonnes of the methyl isocyanate — the chemical that leaked from the plant in gas form — into it from the 1970s until the intervening night of December 2 and 3, 1984. That night, the gas leaked, killing at least 2,259 people and affecting at least 500,000 more. Since then, local people have referred to the pond as “zehreela talaab (toxic pond)”.
Until the early 1990s, the pond was fenced off with six to eight guards keeping people away. It stands on land owned by Atul Sharma, a cousin of the BJP MP from Jhansi, Anurag Sharma.
Sharma, who gave the land on lease to Union Carbide (a joint stock company owned by the multinational of the same name and the state government, which had a minority stake) fought a legal battle in court for 19 years until 2003 when the ownership was returned to him by a Bhopal court. By then, the ownership of Union Carbide had moved to Dow Chemical, which acquired the company in 2000.
A decade later, in 2013, Sharma tried to fill up the pond and construct a housing colony on it. But the survivors of the gas tragedy moved the Supreme Court, claiming the pond had been deemed poisonous and posed a permanent health hazard to anyone living there. In an affidavit to the Supreme Court in 2013, the state government said that a subdivisional magistrate had prohibited Sharma from carrying out any commercial activities on the land under Section 133 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The matter is still pending before the court.
Yet, earlier this year, locals spotted two farmers visiting the pond regularly, sowing and tending to water chestnuts. They were identified as Satish Ricchariya and Deepak Raikwar. This month, 3,000kg of the produce was ready for sale across Bhopal, prompting local activists to approach the authorities who stopped the farming and the harvest of the crop.
Mohammad Shafique, a resident of the Blue Moon Colony, said the pond was “used as a chemical disposal tank by Union Carbide from 1977 to 1984 through pipes, with the factory only a kilometre and a half away”. “For the past four decades, we have always known that even drinking this water could be fatal, something repeated to us over and over by the authorities. There was once a boundary here, and guards. How can it suddenly be okay for farming?” Shafique asked
Other local people said that the authorities told them that groundwater in a 3-km radius had turned poisonous due to the dumping of methyl isocyanate. “After the accident, the toxic waste wasn’t disposed from the pond, and multiple tests have shown that hazardous effluents have entered groundwater in a 3-km radius,” said another resident, Shahbaz Khan. “As people who live here, we only depend on tap water. But we have seen precautions becoming lax over the years. First, a few locals started fishing and water chestnut farming, but in a tiny area of the pond. This year, they are doing it over the entire pond. This is just dangerous.”
Ricchariya and Raikwar, involved in the buying and selling of land and contract farming in villages in and around Bhopal, said there is “nothing wrong with the water”, and they had taken the pond on rent from Sharma for ₹25,000 for a year. “Locals were doing fish farming in the pond after the monsoon and they are fine. What is the problem if we have started doing it in an organised manner? So much hard work has gone into this. The locals didn’t say anything when we started the farming, but now that the chestnut is ready for sale in the market, they are raising issues,” said Ricchariya.
But concerns about health are very real. Activists said that this very pond has been the subject of as many as 17 toxicity studies conducted by, among others, the National Environmental Engineering
Research Institute, Indian Institute of Toxicology Research, Centre for Science and Environment, Greenpeace, Central Pollution Control board, and the State Pollution Control Board, and that each revealed the presence of toxic chemicals in groundwater because of the dumped waste in the pond.
“The most recent study conducted in 2017 by Indian Institute of Toxicology Research revealed that chemical oxygen demand (COD) was far beyond the permissible limit. COD test is done to measure the amount of organic pollutants in water. The other studies revealed the presence of six persistent organic pollutants, heavy metals and toxic chemicals in the soil and groundwater. How then are these people being allowed to do farming at the main spot of toxic waste? They are putting the lives of people in Bhopal at risk if the chestnut enters the market,” said Rachna Dhingra, convener, Bhopal Group for Information & Action, an NGO. Raikwar said that when they were taking the pond on rent, they were assured that they could do “anything on the pond.” “Atul bhaiya assured us that we won’t face any difficulty,” Raikwar said. Despite repeated attempts, Atul Sharma, who lives in Jhansi in Uttar Pradesh, refused to comment on the issue over phone. But Jhansi MP Anurag Sharma said, “My cousin has a pond in Bhopal and there is a dispute there but I am not aware of it.”
The district administration intervened on Saturday. “We have stopped them (the farmer) from farming and collecting nuts from the pond. We will clear all the fish and water chestnuts from the pond and will also set up fencing around the pond with a warning board to prevent any such activities in the future,” said Bhopal district collector Avinash Lavaniya.
But Ricchariya and Raikwar have said that they are now in debt as Sharma has not entertained any request for a refund of the money paid as rent and the district administration has refused to provide them any compensation.
“We took a loan of ₹2 lakh from money-lenders as investment. What happens to us now? We took the pond on rent in the hope of earning some money at a time Covid-19 limited earning opportunities. We are BPL (below poverty line) card holders, and if they destroy the yield, how will we pay the debt?” Raikwar said.
The Bhopal Municipal Corporation has no answer except that the liability rests with the owner of the land, who is soon to be served a notice. Municipal commissioner KVS Chaudhary said,
“The person who has given the pond on rent should pay their debt because knowingly or not, they were putting the lives of common people at risk. We will also serve a notice to the owner as all the commercial activities are strictly prohibited on this land.”