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The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) has asked Mumbai Waste Management Ltd, a hazardous waste management company with a facility near Mumbai, to incinerate 10 tonnes of toxic waste from the Union Carbide's Bhopal plant.
The company is keen to dispose of the waste, provided the pollution control boards of Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh give clearances.
On the night of December 2, 1984, leakage of highly toxic methyl isocyanate gas from the Bhopal plant led to the immediate death of over 3,800 people. Over the last 27 years, 350 tonnes of toxic pesticide raw material and other compounds have been festering in the defunct plant. The CPCB in the past has made two attempts to dispose of this waste but due to political opposition, the waste could not be moved from the plant.
Mumbai Waste Management Ltd (MWML), located at Taloja, near Mumbai, is part of the Hyderabad-based Ramky Group. It has a facility equipped with two large incinerators to dispose of the hazardous chemical waste.
Mr Goutham Reddy, Executive Director of Ramky Group, told Business Line that there are five types of waste in the plant that the CPCB has asked the MWML to dispose. Some samples of the waste have been sent to the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board for testing. As a ‘pilot test' MWML will first analyse and then get rid of two tonnes of waste from each category, he said.
Handling such waste is routine, as over the last eight years, MWML has land-filled and incinerated thousands of tonnes of hazardous waste. It also has prior experience in handling such material, as the dangerous task of packing the waste in safe containers at Bhopal was carried out by an associate company of the Ramky Group, he said.
“Today, we have enough infrastructure facilities to safely dispose of the waste. The challenge is not technical but societal in nature. We must remember that what escaped from the plant was a gas, while what we have today is old solid waste material, which has lost much of its toxicity,” Mr Reddy said.
In the incinerator, the waste will be put in small parcels. In the first stage, the waste will be burnt at 850-950 degrees centigrade. The flue gases emanating from the burnt waste will be further processed at 1,200 degrees centigrade. The final residual gases will be cleaned in a ‘scrubber system' and then let out into the air.
rahulw@thehindu.co.in
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