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The Rediff Business Special/George Iype

Green groups gun for Grasim's Mavoor unit

Part-I: Trade unions, politicians flay Grasim's bid to sell Mavoor plant

For more than 40 years, residents living near the long Chaliyar river have been suffering from severe air, water and solid waste pollution which the massive Mavoor Grasim has been causing them for decades now.

Records with the Central and state pollution control boards say the Birla pulp and fibre factories at Mavoor have flouted many of the environmental and pollution norms.

The disposal of liquid, gaseous and solid wastes from Mavoor Grasim have seriously affected nine densely populated panchayats and the Chaliyar river skirting them, said the apex Central Pollution Control Board said in a report last year.

Environmentalists argue that the Birla plants devoured some 200,000 tonne of raw materials annually in the form of eucalyptus, bamboo reeds and other timber.

"Mavoor Grasim is responsible for the extensive deforestation of the Western Ghats and the terrible pollution levels at Chaliyar river," says K P Sashikumar, an environmental activist.

"Environmentally, Mavoor Grasim has been a disaster. The Birlas are eager to sell the units because the company knows well that they can not carry on with a factory that kills people," Sashikumar told rediff.com.

He said the Birlas' decision to close down the factory and sell it now is a pressure tactics to get more raw materials in subsidised rates and to escape from the obligation of compensating the victims of industrial pollution.

The state government has been supplying the raw materials to Mavoor Grasim in highly subsidised rates. Activists claim in the subsidised wood stock that the government supplied to the Birlas in the last four decades would amount to nearly Rs 250 billion.

At least two dozen cases if compensation and human rights are now pending in the Kerala High Court and the National Human Rights Commission from victims of polluting Grasim plants.

According to P K M Chekku, convenor of the Chaliyar Action Council that has been spearheading an agitation against Mavoor Grasim for years now, Birlas have shown scant regard for the pollution victims so far.

"It is now an established law that the polluter pays. Birlas are liable not only to compensate the victims of pollution but also to reclaim the environment," Checkku told rediff.com.

Agitation from local panchayat committees coupled with a sustained environmental campaign from social activists forced the world's biggest environment organisation Greenpeace to investigate the health damage caused by the Mavoor Grasim viscose staple fibre factory last year.

In its report, Greenpeace declared that the Mavoor Grasim plant is a "slow motion Bhopal." Thousands of people were killed and millions maimed in Bhopal, the site of one of the world's worst industrial disasters when Union Carbide's pesticides factory leaked a poisonous gas in 1983.

The report said studies from around the world have identified more than 300 organochlorine chemicals-including dioxins, furans, chlorinated phenols, acids and benzenes-in the discharges of pulp mills. These chemicals account more than 10 per cent of all the organochlorines in the effluent; the remaining are "mystery chemicals" that have not been specifically identified or assessed.

"Chlorine-based pulp mills such as Grasim are inherently polluting and the organochlorine discharges from the mills could contain some of the most potent poisons known to science," the Greenpeace report warned.

"Organochlorine poisons many of which occur in traces, are virtually impossible to regulate and are capable of inflicting long-term permanent damage on the health of environment and people," it said.

"Going by the kinds of persistent pollutants released from pulp mills and the fact that Birla's Mavoor factory has been discharging poisons for more than 30 years, it can be assumed that both the environment surrounding the factory and the people living nearby may have suffered long-term damages," the report added.

Greenpeace has already extended its support to the polluting victims, including workers, of Birlas' factory and demanded that the Birlas be held liable for any long-term damage caused by the factory.

Many believe Kumaramangalam Birla decided to sell Mavoor Grasim because it is easy to tackle the labour unions than fight environmental and health organisations like Greenpeace.

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