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4 Gujarat sites among South Asia’s most polluted

Even as Gujarat basks in the glory of its industrial development, the Golden Corridor in South Gujarat has gained international infamy for extreme land and water pollution.

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Even as Gujarat basks in the glory of its industrial development, the Golden Corridor in South Gujarat has gained international infamy for extreme land and water pollution, which has affected the lives of lakhs of residents living in the region. According to an annual research conducted by Blacksmith Institute in 2008, four sites from Gujarat figure in South Asia's 66 most-polluted sites.

These are the Narmada's tributary Amlakhadi river; Ankleshwar Industrial estate, Bajwa and Damangaga river in Vapi.

"The Bharuch Enviro Aqua Infrastructure Ltd (BEAIL) collects waste from three Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation (GIDC) industrial estates - Ankleshwar GIDC, Jhagadia GIDC and Panoli GIDC, and discharges it into the Amlakhadi, which flows for about 10 kilometres before converging with the Narmada. Amla khadi (a rivulet flowing through the industrial estate) in Ankleshwar carries extremely toxic, dark brown or black effluents around the year," the report states.

"The Ankleshwar industrial estate is Asia's largest industrial estate and comprises of approximately 3,000 individual units, half of them chemical units that manufacture chemicals like dyes, paints and fertilisers. It has been estimated that 250-270 million litres/day of effluents and 50,000 tonnes of solid waste/year are generated from the estate. Although the larger industries have there own effluent treatment plants, many of the medium and smeller units have been reported to directly dump their waste into open ditches or into the rivers without prior treatment," the report states.

As for Bajwa, one of the lesser known sites till recently, the report explains, "A mountain of waste gypsum and hazardous waste lies in the open at the Gujarat State Fertilizers and Chemicals (GSFC) complex at Bajwa. In 1998, heavy rains caused the radioactive waste to flow into the town affecting several residential areas. The slush may have contained cadmium, chromium, copper, lead, manganese, calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, silica, sulfate, total phosphate, fluoride, and radioactive substances, according to a report by the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute. Many wells in the 18 villages surrounding GSFC became unusable because of the waste contaminating the groundwater.

According to Nuclear Threat Initiative, a charitable organisation working to reduce the global threat from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, the contamination occurred because GSFC failed to overlay the dump site with an impervious sheet to prevent leaching. The Indian People's Tribunal on Environment and Human Rights said following a visit to the area, they were informed that the dumping of gypsum at the site was going on despite a Gujarat High Court order restraining GSFC from doing so."

As for the Damanganga River in Vapi, it receives effluents from the Vapi Industrial Estate with pharmaceuticals, pulp and paper, pesticides, agrochemicals, and dye industries. "It is the drinking water resource for the surrounding villages. There are sludge storage sites and an artificial unlined pond at the bank of the river containing huge quantities of toxic dried sludge," the report said.
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