Business Desk :
This year alone, five ships carrying fly ash – the primary waste generated from coal-fired power plants – containers to Bangladesh have sunk on the Indo-Bangladesh Protocol Route.
In two of these five accidents, over 1,500 tonnes of fly-ash, while in transit on barges, sank in the River Hooghly near Kulpi and Kachuberia in West Bengal. Both Kachuberia and Kulpi are in the Sundarbans, a part of the world’s largest delta formed by the confluence of the rivers Ganga and Brahmaputra in the Bay of Bengal region.
Bappa Dulai, a fisherman in Kulpi, said, “It took about ten days to clear the mound of ash floating on the river, but the shipwreck became a permanent fixture. A pool of fuel and coal dust formed at the bottom of the wreck kept polluting the water, killing fish and other aquatic creatures.”
Meanwhile, the Indian inland waterways system has recently come under the National Green Tribunal’s scanner for pollution in the River Hooghly and the fragile Sunderbans ecology, reports The Business Standard.
An Indian fish-workers’ trade union, Dakshinbanga Matsyajibi Forum, filed a petition against frequent accidents and capsizing barges carrying dirty fly-ash on the on the National Waterway (NW) 97, also known as the Indo-Bangladesh Protocol Route and Sunderbans Waterway.
The Tribunal’s Kolkata bench admitted the petition on 19 October and gave notice to the respondents, ordering them to respond in six weeks. The tribunal formed a committee to verify the “factual aspects set out in the application.” It also asked for a probe into why these accidents were happening and suggestions as to measures to prevent the accidents and manage fly-ash that has already been discharged in the rivers.
The plea also stated that the amount of fly ash exported to Bangladesh by river is above the quantity that has been set by the West Bengal Pollution Control Board.
According to a 2017 report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, 5.97 lakh metric tonnes of fly ash was exported, as opposed to the 1.2 lakh metric tonnes permitted in 2014-2015.
