Toxic Air From Industrial Units Set

up Away From Chennai's Affluent

Is Literally Blowing Back
Chennai can never dream of clean air as long as it considers the
city's edges – be it Ennore and Manali in the north or Alathur to the
south – to be industrial sacrifice zones.
Nityanand Jayaraman
2
interactions

ENVIRONMENT
11/MAY/2017
 A view of the Seppakkam ash pond, with chimney stacks seen on the
horizon. Source: YouTube

On 11 May, 2011, the Madras high court directed the

Chennai port to stop handling dusty cargo like iron ore
and coal. The court observed that the toxic dust from the
cargo polluted the air and harmed the health of the
resident population. It directed port authorities to instead
divert the cargo to Ennore port about 20 km to the north,
and observed that “the Right to Life with its extended
meaning of including the right to clean environment was
as sacrosanct as the citizens’ basic right.” Responding to
the port’s claim that shifting of dusty cargo operations to
Ennore would lead to unrest among port employees, the
court also cited a dubious-sounding argument : a “well
established principle of law [is] that the interest of
society’s major sections should always prevail over that of
small sections.”

In moving polluting activities out of sight of the society’s

“major sections,” the court had knowingly or unknowingly
followed the tradition of locating hazardous industries in
places where the citizens’ right to life matters a little less
than that of the major sections of society. North Chennai,
of which Ennore is a part, is one such place. Ambattur,
Alathur and the newly industrialising Sriperumbudur are
the others.

From the time of its incorporation, Madras – a.k.a Chennai

– has grown with discrimination as one of the central
logics of planning. In the days of the British, when the
waves of the bay licked the walls of Fort St. George, the
urban native settlement north of the Cooum River’s exit to
sea was called ‘Blacktown’. The working class population
of Blacktown and the surrounding areas drove the
economy that allowed the sahebs to live lives of luxury in
the gardened bungalows of south and central Chennai.

The white rulers have left, but the proud Dravidian rulers
have persisted with discriminatory traditions. Along the
city’s edges – in Manali, Perambur, Ponneri, Alathur and
Ambattur – a disproportionately high concentration of
polluting industries has sprung up, especially in
neighbourhoods with a higher than normal SC/ST
population.

But this story of environmental discrimination has a twist

to it. Chennai can never dream of clean air as long as it
considers the city’s edges – be it Ennore and Manali in the
north or Alathur to the south – to be industrial sacrifice
zones. At least some of the pollution that was so carefully
relegated to the edges is sailing right back to the centre,
making Chennai’s air unbreathable.

The Noxious North

In April 2017, volunteers from Coastal Resource Centre, an

NGO program (that I advise), collected air samples from
11 locations in and around the Chennai metropolitan area.
Nine samples were from the rooftops of working-class
households in North Chennai and further in rural
Thiruvallur. Two were from elite residential
neighbourhoods in Central Chennai. They were analysed
for PM2.5 levels. PM2.5 refers to dust particles that are
less than 2.5 micrometres wide, about 30-times smaller
than the width of a human hair. When it comes to dust,
small is neither beautiful nor harmless. Loaded with
neurotoxic and carcinogenic contaminants such as heavy
metals and hydrocarbons, these fine particles penetrate
deep into the pores of the lungs and can inflict serious,
long-lasting damage.

Per the Indian standard, PM2.5 levels averaged over a

year should not exceed 60 microgram/m3 (μg/m3). This
standard itself is pathetically lax. The World Health
Organisation prescribes an annual average standard of 10
μg/m3. For every 10 μg/m3 increase in PM2.5, mortality
rates increase by 3-26%. Childhood asthma risk increases
by 16%, lung cancer risk, by 36%, and heart attacks, by
44%.
(Article continues after images)
Oil refineries flare in the distance behind the fly ash pond that borders
Kuruvimedu village in Ennore, Chennai. Credit: Greg McNevin, Unmask
My City
 Residents of NTO Kuppam, Chennai, have tried to adapt to the
increasing encroachment of heavy industry and traffic on their village.
Credit: Greg McNevin, Unmask My City
 Children playing near the TPP. Credit: Shweta

Air pollution harms lives and costs money. In a

presentation on Chennai’s air quality, Sarath Guttikunda,
an air pollution expert and founder of the group Urban
Emissions, noted that the health-impact costs of air
pollution for the city of Chennai alone may be up to Rs
1,960 crore a year.

Of all the Chennai samples, four of the worst were

predictably from North Chennai. If Chennai were in Delhi,
the sample results would have made national news. April
9, when the Central Pollution Control Board’s air pollution
monitor in New Delhi’s ITO area registered a healthy 40
μg/m3, the fisherfolk residents of Nalla Thanni Odai
Kuppam (NTO Kuppam) on Ennore expressway were filling
their lungs with 220 ug of toxic particles for every cubic
metre of air inhaled. That’s 5.5x.

In fact, the levels from the four locations are so high that
if the samples had been taken in the US, that country’s
Environmental Protection Agency would have issued an
advisory asking the elderly, children and people with heart
or lung diseases to avoid all physical activity.

NTO Kuppam is a repeat victim. The village was originally

located on sprawling beaches that once spread to the east
of the road that has now become the Ennore expressway.
However, the beaches were eroded when the Chennai
harbour was constructed. Now, the original NTO Kuppam –
with its temples, community spaces and surveyed lands
with title deeds – are all under more than 15 feet of water
(due to sea advance).

In 2000, when the Kamarajar port was constructed further

north in Ennore, the state governmentdecided to convert
the coastal road dividing what’s left of NTO Kuppam into a
six-lane highway. NTO Kuppam was the only village that
refused to move; its residents were afraid of losing access
to the sea. So the six-lane expressway narrows to a two-
lane road with houses on either side but well below the
road’s level. In fact, an adult standing at the doorway
would be at the exact same height as the exhaust pipes of
the lorries carrying shipping containers that trundle slowly
through the bottleneck.

The other worst-affected locations – Manali, Sivanpadai

Kuppam and Kodungaiyur – are all hemmed in by heavy
polluters. Manali has a sprawling petrochemical industrial
estate. Kodungaiyur hosts the city’s largest garbage
dump. Sivanpadai Kuppam lies in the shadow of three
towering smokestacks in Ennore, belonging to the North
Chennai Thermal Power Station (NCTPS), the Ennore
Thermal Power Station and the NTECL power plant (the
last located in Vallur).

The coal ash disgorged by the power plants are dumped in

large ash ponds that sprawl over about 2,000 acres in two
locations. Kuruvimedu (Tamil for ‘Sparrow Hill’) has no
sparrows and is no longer the hillock it used to be. This
entirely Dalit settlement, formerly peopled with salt-pan
workers, was once the only high ground in the region. To
the east, north and south of Sparrow Hill lay more than
1,500 acres of mangrove-fringed salt pans. To the west
was about 50 acres of grazing commons, called meichakal
poromboke in Tamil. Now, a power plant and coal-stack
yard define the northern boundary of the village, and
more than 600 acres of salt pans that the villagers used to
work on are now a dump yard for the toxic coal ash from
this plant. Needless to say, ash gets into every pore in
their bodies, every flat surface and leaf and through every
crevice in people’s homes.

A similar but much larger ash pond for the older and
larger NCTPS is located in another Dalit village of former
salt pan workers, called Seppakkam. The Seppakkam ash
pond’s claim to fame came with eminent vocalist T.M.
Krishna’s popular Carnatic environmental campaign
song, Chennai Poromboke Paadal.
NTECL’s and NCTPS’s environmental clearances require
project authorities to develop a greenbelt around the ash
dumps to an extent of at least 25% of the ash-handling
area. But you will not find a single tree around either. The
authorities know this but simply don’t do anything about
it.

Samples taken from Seppakkam and Kuruvimedu returned

with results that indicated the air quality was unhealthy.
As it happens, it is easier to clean up the ash pond than it
is to keep the children from playing cricket on the ash-
tainted playgrounds.

“My village, which was pretty and healthy just 10 years

ago, is now a graveyard of coal ash,” says N. Venkatesh, a
contract worker from Kuruvimedu whose father worked as
a boatman for the Central Salt Board. Now, both father
and the salt trade are dead. NTECL, the NTPC-TANGEDCO
joint venture which operates the plant, has neither done
anything to curb pollution nor relocate the villagers to a
healthier location. (TANGEDCO stands for Tamil Nadu
Generation and Distribution Corporation.)

A twist in the tale

Horrible air quality where the poor and the politically

marginalised live is par for the course of modern-day
environmental discrimination. However, the results from
the two samples taken from elite residential
neighbourhoods of Central Chennai held a surprise.

One sample was taken from Poes Garden, from a rooftop a

short distance away from the homes of superstar
Rajinikanth and the former chief minister J. Jayalalithaa.
The other was taken from Boat Club Road, an elite
residential area housing Chennai’s billionaires, including
Kalanithi Maran and India Cements MD and former BCCI
chairman N. Srinivasan.

The Poes Garden sample had PM2.5 levels of 101 μg/m3

and Boat Club, 104 μg/m3.
Including Poes Garden and Boat Club, all 11 samples
taken in and around the city had elevated levels of iron,
silica and calcium, suggesting that the combustion of coal
in industrial or power plant boilers located in the margins
may be blowing the poisons right back towards their
planners’ noses.

Source: Author provided

“There is a case to be made that emissions from coal ash

dumps, thermal plants and industrial boilers may be
getting resuspended to create regionally elevated levels
or iron and calcium particulates in Chennai,” said Mark
Chernaik, a staff scientist at the US-based NGO ELAW-US.
Chernaik had interpreted the air sampling results at the
behest of the Coastal Resource Centre.

At a press conference announcing the results, Hisamuddin

Papa, a leading pulmonologist from the Chennai-based
Huma Hospital, said, “The high concentration of polluting
industries in the city’s northern and southern edges is
affecting all of Chennai. The levels we see across the city
suggest that we may be in the midst of a public health
emergency. This emergency cannot be tackled as long
as existing industries continue to emit pollutants in
violation of norms, and more and more polluting industries
are allowed to come up.”

The Ennore region alone already has an installed capacity

of 3,330 MW of coal-fired thermal power plants. An
additional 6,600 MW has been approved for this region. If
the campaign of the Ennore fisherfolk calling for a
moratorium on polluting industries fails, even the sea
breeze from the Bay of Bengal will not be able to save
Chennai from a fate worse than Beijing or New Delhi.

Coal ash from Ennore plant making air of

neighbourhood unhealthy
MAY 12, 2017 THECOASTALRESOURCECENTRE LEAVE A COMMENT
Coal ash released by thermal power plants in Ennore may be polluting the
air in Poes Garden and Boat Club, a study by The Coastal Resource Centre
has found.
Air samples collected in Poes Garden and Boat Club contained
components of coal ash like calcium and iron in elevated levels, making
the air quality in the upmarket city neighbourhoods `unhealthy’.

The quality of air in Nallathanneer Odai Kuppam, a village near the

thermal power plants was marked `very unhealthy’. It recorded a PM2.5
level of 220.30 microgram per cubic metre, against the permissible level
of 60 microgram per cubic metre.
Environmental activist Nityanand Jayaraman said, “When winds blow from
north to south, they bring polluted air from Ennore into the city. Currently
winds are blowing from the south to north, carrying polluted air from
industries in Alathur into the city.“

Members of The Coastal Resource Centre collected 24-hour air samples

from 11 locations in Ennore, Manali, Kodungaiyur, Kattupalli and parts of
the city last month. The samples were analysed in Chester LabNet at
Oregon, USA.

The air samples collected from Boat Club and Poes Garden were had
particulate matter of 104 microgram per cubic metre and 101 microgram
cubic respectively.

As per the standards of United States Environmental Protection Agency,

the two neighbourhoods have `unhealthy’ air. This is a matter of concern
for children, senior citizens and people with heart or lung disease.

A Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB) official said, “We are closely
monitoring the emission levels around the thermal plants in Ennore to
ensure there are no adverse effects.“

The article appeared in The Times of India. Can be accessed here.