40 years after Bhopal gas tragedy, Union Carbide’s toxic waste yet to be removed

Toxic waste from Bhopal gas tragedy remains unaddressed, posing health risks; government fails to act despite court orders.

Four decades after the Bhopal gas tragedy, hundreds of tonnes of toxic waste remain on the premises of Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL). Despite multiple court orders and warnings, government authorities have not disposed of the waste safely, officials confirmed to The Hindu.

The Union government has released ₹126 crore to the Madhya Pradesh government to carry out plans to dispose of 337 MT of the toxic waste, which was collected and kept in the premises of the factory in 2005, documents show.

However, a 2010 government-commissioned study showed that, apart from this 337 MT of toxic waste, the factory premises also contains about 11 lakh tonnes of contaminated soil, one tonne of mercury, and nearly 150 tonnes of underground dumps. The government has no plans yet on how to deal with this.

The presence of waste dumps within the premises show that the 2005 collection of waste was “incomplete”, the 2010 report noted. It had then recommended excavation of the toxic waste from the dumps in order to remediate it.

Subsequently, a ‘peer review committee’, formed in 2010 to look into different government studies till that point, recommended a comprehensive assessment. Fourteen years later, however, a proper reassessment is yet to be done.

“Though ₹126 crore was released in March this year for disposing 337 MT of waste, the state government is yet to actually begin the process of disposing it on the ground. We understand that there are some administrative issues,” a Central government official told The Hindu.

In June 2023, an oversight committee — which met 12 years after its last meeting on May 25, 2011 – had again recommended that the Madhya Pradesh government undertake fresh studies to quantify groundwater and soil contamination and the underground dumps of toxic waste.