Experts to conduct impact study impact in Nagaland oil spil

A two-member team of scientists will conduct an ‘impact study’ in Nagaland’s oil spillage-affected Changpang-Tissori belt even as the state government has finally woken up to clean up the mess.

DNA was the first report on September 18 that two Nagaland villages are faced with catastrophic environmental consequences in the wake of a two decade-old oil spillage from oil fields abandoned by the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC).

Villagers had claimed that the oil seepage has reached alarming proportions, polluting water and damaging land fertility besides causing serious health hazards.

Two Dehradun-based scientists will visit the state for an on-the-spot study of soil and water allegedly contaminated by the oil spillage. The scientists are coming at the invitation of Dice Foundation, a Kohima-based NGO that took up the fight on behalf of the affected villagers and filed a petition in the Guwahati high court seeking Rs1000 crore compensation from the state government, ONGC and Union petroleum and environment ministry.

“We have roped in a couple of scientists from a Dehradun-based research institute. They will visit Changpang in the second or third week of October,” Dice Foundation head Mmhonlumo Kikon told DNA. The scientists will be there for five days during which they will conduct an impact study, he informed.

“They will do a preliminary testing of soil and water in Changpang and then go back to Dehradun. Eventually, they will publish a report. We’ll submit a copy of it to the court,” Kikon added.

Official sources said one of the six companies shortlisted by the government would be entrusted with the task of cleaning up the mess and mining hydrocarbon products.

“It will take about two years to cap the wells and repair clogged pipes and clean up oil spillage,” Nagaland’s planning minister TR Zeliang said.

The villagers claim oil seepage from the oil wells, left abandoned by the ONGC in 1994, has reached alarming proportions polluting water and damaging land fertility besides causing serious health hazards.

Zeliang spurned ONGC’s offer of cleaning up the mess saying the mining license to the company had been already cancelled.

The ONGC operated in the Changpang-Tissori belt of Nagaland’s Wokha district for 21 years before it was asked to pack off by the state government in 1994 amidst protests by some local pressure groups and the insurgents. The protestors said the stakeholders were not consulted before drilling as mandated by customary Naga land rights.