Despite the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) and the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) declaring Singrauli as a critically polluted region, this entire area is witnessing a major expansion thrust with companies pushing to set up new power projects and coal mines.
Singrauli currently has 10 coal-based thermal power plants which produce 13,200 MW and 14 coal mines producing over 83 million tonnes of coal per annum apart from having cement plants and aluminium smelting plants.
The CPCB had asked the State Pollution Control Boards of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh to reduce pollution levels in the region by going in for stricter monitoring of air pollution and a 100 per cent utilisation of fly ash.
The SPCBs, however, failed to come up with a combined action plan to monitor and control the rising levels of pollution. Instead, increasing pressure from the state governments and industry, saw MoEF lift the moratorium on new projects with state governments giving the green signal for generating an additional 120 million tonnes of coal and also the setting up of additional power plants to generate 9600 MW of thermal power.
The Centre for Science & Environment, in an expose, have found that most of these thermal power plants are dumping their fly ash in open areas or drains which is making its way into the Gobind Ballabh Pant Sagar Reservoir whose waters are becoming increasingly polluted.
Residents of this area fear the intensification of industry has seen rising levels of mercury pollution in their land, water, soil and food. A fact that has already been confirmed by a 2002 estimate done by the CPCB which highlighted that 17 per cent of the nation’s thermal plant mercury emissions were from the Singrauli region.
A study looking at mercury levels in Singralui undertaken by the Indian Institute of Toxicology Research, Lucknow, also confirmed that people here were suffering from diseases that showed symptoms of mercury poisoning. Community representatives of Singrauli appro-ached the CSE to take up this issue and blood samples of 19 people taken in 2012 only served to re-confirm this fear. Laboratory tests revealed the presence of an average of 34.3 parts per billion mercury (pbb) which is six times the safe limit of 5.8 pbb set by the US Environment Protec-tion Agency