Date: 9/1/2003
Chennai: Confessing that the electricity generation from waste is not an Eureka solution, Energy Developments Limited (EDL), the Australian company has once again renewed its proposal to set up the resource incineration plant in Chennai. The presentation by EDL on 7/1/2003 to the Tamil Nadu pollution Control Board failed to answer most of the environmental and feasibility questions.

Conventional wisdom has it that waste management must be done in a sustainable manner. But Chennai Corporation is choosing an unsustainable and hazardous dioxins emitting technology to manage its waste. Dioxins are a cancer causing, endocrine disrupter and is said to be 150 times more poisonous than the cyanide gas. In a situation in which India neither has standards nor the technical facilities to monitor and analyse these dioxin emissions, corporation has signed a memorandum of understanding with Energy Developments Limited Private India Limited (EDL). EDL India is actually a subsidiary of the Australian company 12 % of whose shares are held by the U S based Smith family’s Brightstar Synfuel Corporation.

The plant has been proposed at Perungudi dumpsite where the company has been leased a 15-acre plot of land for 15 years by the corporation. The dumpsite receives about 1,200 tonnes of waste per day. They intend to dispose of waste and recover electricity through the company’s gasification technology, which it calls a Solid Waste Energy Recycling Facility (SWERF).

The word “recycling” in the process is a misnomer used to mislead gullible bureaucrats and the media. In fact, a technology like this will kill the recycling sector and destroy the source of livelihood of people working in this sector.
Gasification is an incineration process that emits dioxins, the most poisonous cancer-causing toxin known in the world. Incineration transfers the hazardous characteristics of waste from solid form to air, water and ash. It also releases new toxins, which were not present in the original waste stream, besides generating heavy metals. Contrary to what EDL says, the gasification of waste leads to global warming and cannot be allowed, as India is a signatory of Kyoto Protocol.
The annexure A of the Protocol says that incineration processes cause green house gas emission. It is a resource destroying process. The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed by the corporation and EDL has been kept confidential, despite Tamil Nadu having the Right To Information Act. The agreement is inaccessible even to media people and researchers.
The world’s first and only SWERF plant located in Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia, is still in an experimental and developing stage. The company proposes to produce 14.85 MW of electricity using 600 metric tonnes per day of municipal solid waste given by the Chennai Corporation. It plans to sell it to the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board (TNEB) at a cost of Rs.3.87 per unit.
EDL’s claim that the plant will eliminate the need for a dumping ground by diverting 80 percent of the waste is false. Where will the plant dispose of the ash? It says it will return the remaining 20-25 percent of toxic waste to the corporation. How will the corporations deal with this waste? Ash and suspended particulate matter that emerge from the combustion technologies like these is a huge perpetual problem because although there is volume reduction of waste through this technique, the management of ever growing ash remains.
The technology intends to use Chennai residents as guinea pigs. As a consequence of which several toxins that will enter the food chain and poisons the health and environment for generations.
Interestingly, in the presentation made by EDL before the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB), it tried to contradict the composition of the waste as was analysed by the corporation but it failed to show Mercury in its own study. The advocates of the project have no way to segregate Mercury from the garbage as is required. This is yet another instance of ignoring environment and public health effects. EDL’s controversial incineration technology emits dioxins, which the company would have us believe would be much lower than the permitted level. “However it has been clearly shown that dioxin is carcinogenic even in trace quantities. Further, no Indian laboratory has tested dioxins. How then can there be a permissible limit here in India?”, asks Gopal Krishna, a Toxics Campaigner. India has made an international commitment to minimise the production and use of 12 of the most toxic chemicals in the world, known as the Dirty Dozen, by signing the United Nations Environment Program’s (UNEP), Stockholm Treaty on persistent organic pollutants (POPs), it subsidises and promotes the production of POP throughout the country.
Signing the POPs treaty is at odds with the current policy of the Union ministry of non-conventional energy sources (MNES) to promote dioxin-emitting high heat waste-to-energy (WTE) technologies. The MNES has issued an executive order to all the state chief secretaries and the administrators of Union Territories asking them to promote such WTE projects.
As a consequence, agreements for many such toxic projects have been signed and are being signed around the country. Surprisingly, these projects have undergone no environment impact assessment and public hearing process. The approval from the Technical Appraisal Committee (TAC) has not even been sought. EDL’s project in Delhi’s Gazipur gasification-based WTE project with 1000 MT per day to generate 25 MW of power, has been shelved following pollution-related objections. How can a technology which has been found polluting in Delhi becomes non-polluting in Chennai?
There are three recent studies on India that show high levels of dioxins and organo-chlorine pesticides in human milk samples, wildlife and dairy products. According to the first study, presented at an International Symposium on Dioxins in Seoul, Korea in 2001, breast milk samples collected from India showed the highest levels of dioxin-related compounds. Samples were collected from residents living around municipal dumpsites from Perengudi, Chennai, India.

Environment Resource Management, London in a study of the Perungudi dumpsite has clearly certified the garbage as most suitable for composting rather than for burn-based technologies. This is the sanest waste management concept but foreign multinational companies perceive Indian waste as a market for their failed technologies. Waste is a problem that can only be solved by people’s participation not by quick fix technologies.