ORISSA`S BLACK CURSE
They were lured into a death trap. In 1837, when British geologists discovered coal "after scratching the land" at Gopalprasad village near Talcher in Orissa, the villagers rejoiced, anticipating prosperity. For the three million people living in Orissa's coal belts of Talcher and Ib Valley now, the dream has turned sour. The landscape is now dotted with artificial hills - the soil removed during mining is dumped nearby in the form of huge mounds, threatening the existence of hundreds of villages. This year itself, 26 million cubic metres of solid waste would be dumped over 1,015 hectares of land, according to the Environment Management Plan for Angul-Talcher Area, prepared by Kirloskar Consultants Ltd of Pune in 1994.
The useless soil on the upper part of these mounds runs off with rainwater to nearby farms, reducing the already depleted soil fertility."During the monsoon these artificial hills collapse, burying our houses and agricultural fields," laments Sudhakar Mohanty, a resident of Ib Valley region. Lands are dug up clearing forests and uprooting thousands of local residents from their villages. According to an estimate, about 1,012 hectares of land will be wasted and 250 million cubic metre of soil dumped as overburden through open-cast mining in Angul-Talcher coal belt.
The largest reserve of fuel-grade coal in India and the second largest coalfield in terms of production, it has kickstarted a mad rush of thermal power plants and aluminium plants in the area. The result: it is one of the 14 most polluted places in India, according to the Central Pollution Control Board. Industrial towns like Talcher, Brajrajnagar and Belpahar may collapse any day as the ground beneath is hollow because of underground mining.
Opencast mining, which accounts for 95 per cent of mines in Orissa, has already destroyed the ground above. "Opencast mining is like a cancer, it is slowly eating away our land, water and has already spoilt the air," says Sisir Tripathy, convenor of the Dhenkanal District Action Group, a confederation of non-governmental organisations, which are protesting against environmental pollution due to mining and industrialisation.
"In opting for opencast mines, the planners have obviously not spared a thought for the Talcher-Angul area," says Tripathy. In fact, this is in keeping with the mining trend in India - opencast mining is now preferred to underground mining to save operational costs, although it causes grave damage to the environment. "Coal-fired power's impacts started at the coalmines where, in an effort to become more profitable, India's coal industry is moving away from underground mining to opencast strip mining," records a 1996 report published by the Institute of Policy Studies, Washington, DC.
Environmental destruction is taking a heavy toll on public health. A survey by the Bhubaneshwar-based Orissa Voluntary Health Organisation has already shown that people living near coalfields are more vulnerable to stomach and respiratory disorders than those living away from them.