TAF Chennai - The Asthma Files · 2017-09-17 · Pallikaranai. 2 Ennore. Focal Points. ... Seen...
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Transcript of TAF Chennai - The Asthma Files · 2017-09-17 · Pallikaranai. 2 Ennore. Focal Points. ... Seen...
TAF Chennai Research Update
September 5, 2017
Deepa Reddy,Aakanksha Kumar,
Sudipta Mohanty
Image: Chennai Coastal Clean Up Mural on Gandhi Mandapam Ro
WORK IN PROGRESS: PLEASE DO NOT CITE WITHOUT EXPRESS APPROVAL
FROM THE AUTHORS
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POLICY COMMUNITY
Transport-Waste-Urban Development
CONSERVATIONISTS
NATURALISTSMadras Naturalists, Nizhal,
Care Earth Trust
LABOR ORGANIZERS
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE ADVOCATES
Vettiver Collective, Other Media
CIVIC ACTION
ORIENTEDCivic Action Group
ENTREPRENEURS
GLOBAL/ENTREPRENEURI
ALChennai Smart City SPV, City Connect, ITDP/Urban Works
Inst
AIR QUALITY RESEARCHE
RS
OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH TECH
STARTUPS
AirOK
SOCIALPaperman
KabbadiwallahConnect
AMBIENT AIR
INDOOR AIR
Interview Mapping
RESEARCHERS
LABOR RESARCHERS
SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENTCOMMUNITY
ENVIRONMENTALISTS
TNPCB
CPCB
NGT
Presenter
Presentation Notes
1: Participation What counts as participation? (when private capital is required for government work to move forward) Role of participation in urban governance Where are meetings held? 5-star hotels? Separate meetings for different stakeholder groups? Model of showing outcomes and buying support 2: Environmental styles Shift from “reclaim land from lakes” environmentalism pre-1990s – to “restoration” model of environmentalism The latter provides rationale/legal framework for slum resettlement projects – located on urban peripheries and ironically in low-lying former marsh areas Still see the tensions between restoration/conservation-oriented environmentalism and more activist-oriented approaches. 3: Data The absence of data & the need to generate it – need for collaboration with institutions like IITM; --odor incident mapping approaches to generate community data 4: Activist Styles --Ennore group focused very largely on expose, critique, and protest-style activism --Entrepreneurial groups more focused on working with government—having embedded people, such as Cherubal --Care Earth: mapping government 5: Health Impacts --folks seem to be struggling with this. --need frameworks, need data KAREN COELHO Where urban water bodies such as eris, ponds and marshes were once seen as land-in-the-making, to be filled and reclaimed for bus-stops, institutions, housing projects and dump yards, they are now seen as lakes-in-the-making, to be cleared, dredged, de-silted and beautified. These shifting rationalities are underpinned by transformations in conceptions of the urban – from developmentalist visions of cities as sites of social and economic mobility and catalysts of modernity for the region, to neoliberal visions of cities as strategic nodes for the operations of financial globalisation. The state’s post-1990s environmentalism, focused on the “restoration” of lakes, canals and rivers, proclaimed the clearing of encroachments as its key strategy (as evidenced, for instance, in the Tamil Nadu Protection of Tanks and Eviction of Encroachment Act, 2007). A closer look reveals the exclusionary slant of this rhetoric
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1 2Pallikaranai Ennore
Focal Points
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Pallikaranai: Issues: garbage dumping, unauthorized development, encroachments on marshlands, malfunctioning sewage treatment plant. Diverse interests gathering under: Friends of Pallikaranai Wetlands Pallikaranai “movement” essentially one for conservation, with some labor rights issues (for rag pickers) folded in 2007 State government notifies 317 hectares of Marshland as reserve forest under the TN Forest Act 1882 Ennore: Ennore symbolizes the “growth model” North Chennai is one of the most densely populated working class neighbourhoods in the city. Ennore is home to three thermal power plants, two ports, one pharmaceutical company, two fertiliser companies, one coal yard, two oil storage terminals, with many more such industries envisaged for the region by 2050. (Pooja Kumar 2017) Agitation has been over fly ash dumping in Ennore creek, air pollution, loss of fisheries livelihoods; location of polluting industries in lower caste communities, largely about environmental justice and community livelihoods Both Pallikaranai and Ennore issues flow from old British classifications of wetlands and some coastal areas as “poromboke” or wastelands.
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2 Ennore
Ennore & 2015 Chennai Floods
7.1.3 The Committee takes note of the submission of the Ministry of Water Resources that the encroachment of lakes and river beds played a major role in causing massive flood in Chennai. The Committee feels that the State Government should check mafia involved in illegal construction for business and usurping water bodies for their real estate business. The flood channels and riverbed should be cleared as soon as possible by removing illegal/ unauthorized constructions. [Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs Report 198 2016]
Who are the “mafia”?“Going by the popular meaning of mafia as an organised body of criminals, the Ennore Creek encroachers are not strictly mafia. The crime of encroaching, though, is being committed by an organised body of offenders led by state and central Public Sector Units, and facilitated by the very agencies that were set up to protect the environment.”
urce: http://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/why-chennai-like-other-indian-cities-will-definitely-flood-again/story-KVxgIt0zyctNFO70EklYGJ.html
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Going by the popular meaning of mafia as an organised body of criminals, the Ennore Creek encroachers are not strictly mafia. The crime of encroaching, though, is being committed by an organised body of offenders led by state and central Public Sector Units, and facilitated by the very agencies that were set up to protect the environment. In June 2017, Government of India-owned Kamarajar Port Ltd (KPL) sought and obtained permission from the State Coastal Zone Management Authority to construct car parking terminals, coal yards and free trade warehouse zones by reclaiming several hundred acres of the Ennore Creek. This is in addition to 1,090 acres already diverted illegally to accommodate industrial installations belonging to central PSUs Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum, and a power plant and coal ash dump by NTECL, a centre-state joint venture involving NTPC Ltd and Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation (TANGEDCO). KPL’s proposal is pending clearance with the expert appraisal committee of the Union ministry of environment. NTECL’s proposal to further expand its coal ash dump within the creek is pending with the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board. If cleared, the ensuing construction will not only damage the creek irretrievably but also expose 10 lakh people and critical infrastructure, including a petroleum refinery, to disastrous flooding. Kosasthalaiyar, Chennai’s lesser known river is also its biggest. Kosasthalaiyar exits to sea through the 8,000 acre backwaters of the Ennore Creek. The river’s catchment is four times the combined drainage areas of Adyar and Cooum. Seen solely from a flood mitigation perspective, what Chennai does to the Kosasthalaiyar and the Ennore Creek will decide whether the city will survive or succumb with the next above-average rains. In his submission to the parliamentary committee, former Union home secretary Rajiv Mehrishi sought to defend the lapses of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) in the lead-up to the floods by claiming that it is not possible to prepare for a once-in-a-century disaster. The same was echoed by the then chief minister of Tamil Nadu Ms. Jayalalithaa who declared that “swift rescue and relief alone are indicators of a good government.” http://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/why-chennai-like-other-indian-cities-will-definitely-flood-again/story-KVxgIt0zyctNFO70EklYGJ.html
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Public Hearing, May 30 2017
Presenter
Presentation Notes
COELHO et al: How does the state ‘perform’ people’s participation and public consultation exercises in a context where it is increasingly forced to rely on private capital to build infrastructure? How do these new forms of participation and consultation articulate with existing institutions of people’s representation? Are the new mandates for citizen participation and public consultation that are written into the reform agenda driving a further wedge into the already fractured citizenship that characterizes the Indian urban polity?
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Public Hearing, May 30 2017Srini Anna (local community leader):
“Karen [Coelho] Akka spoke so many things in English, just like that I don’t understand your report. We know what illness comes from smoking and cigarettes. This whole area is nothing but cigarette smoke. Such big-big cigarettes they have planted here, red and white ones. Even people smoking beedis here, 80 years old, are fine. Asthma, colds, illnesses—these are the new things.
“Why did they put a power plant here? Why not an IT park?
“You come and stay here for just ½ an hour, see how your skin responds. We stand in ash-choked water for 6 hours at a time.
“We didn’t ask Ashok Leyland for work. They came begging us. But now there is neither work nor livelihood.”
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Public Hearing, May 30 2017Nityanand Jayaraman:
The EIA prepared for TANGEDCO’s 660MW coal power expansion project in Ennoreuses falsified and potentially fraudulent air quality data to justify the location of the polluting project in a heavily polluted area. Not one of the 216 samples taken by TANGEDCO’s consultant, Ramky Enviro Engineers, registers PM2.5 levels that deviate from a narrow range of 19.3 to 36.8 µg/m3; none exceeds the national annual ambient air quality standard of 40 µg/m3. If the EIA data is to be believed, air in the Ennore Manali industrial cluster is cleaner than in any other part of the city, including IIT, Poes Garden and Boat Club.
Source: https://thewire.in/134553/ennore-air-pollution-fly-ash/
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Unfit to Breathe—A Report on Air Quality Around The Thermal Power Plant Cluster in Ennore, Tamil Nadu
In response to resident complaints of deteriorating air quality, air samples collected from rooftops of residential homes of 4 villages — Kattukuppam, Mughathwara Kuppam, Athipattu and Ernavur.
Unfit to Breathe II—Air Quality and Pollution Levels in Chennai City
As a follow up of their air quality study in Ennore in 2016, collected air samples the following year in April from 11 locations in North Chennai as well as Chennai city—including Poe’s Garden & Boat Club.
Unfit to BreatheReports by The Coastal Resource Centre - A Campaign of The Other Media
2016 2017
Presenter
Presentation Notes
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. “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. Note: The 24-hour samples were taken using filters fitted to a low volume air sampler and analysed for PM2.5 and heavy metals in Chester LabNet at Oregon, USA.
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“Industrial Sacrifice Zones”
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.
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 OdaiKuppam (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
Source: Nity Jayaraman, https://thewire.in/134553/ennore-air-pollution-fly-ash/
10Source: https://thewire.in/134553/ennore-air-pollution-fly-ash/
Caste vulnerability in Industrial Sacrifice Zones
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● The critique declares that given that the Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation (TANGEDCO) is already a repeat offender of environmental laws, the fact that there is no reprimand but permission for a new power plant indicates that the regulators are silent bystanders.
● Ambient Air Quality Data presented in EIA is falsified data. There is a suspicious lack of variability in daily average pollutant level which is impossible: due to the daily changes in weather, daily average pollutant levels are expected to vary on a day-to day basis. Furthermore, never once do the PM values exceed whereas independent air sampling reveal “Very Unhealthy” results.
● The EIA also fails to accurately assess other impacts. This is done either through providing an inadequate Fly Ash Disposal Plan for both the older plants and the new one, through inaccurate representation of demographics as they do not take into account nearby fisher villages as well as by conveniently failing to take into account that Ennore is already a heavily industrialised and polluted zone.
● The discrepancies between the TOR (Terms of Reference) requirements and what is provided by the report is listed out in this critique. Since compliance to the guidelines of the TORs prescribed is vital in assessing the impact, this list is instrumental in putting an effective stop to the plan of putting up a new plant.
● As a final argument, the report rejects TANGEDCO’s main justification for a new plant by providing recent reports of an oversupply rather than shortage of power, thus effectively delegitimizing their main claim to open a new thermal plant.
Community Environment Monitors’ EIA Critique Summary
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“Unmask My City”
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Environment (Protection) Act, 1986
May 2011: Madras High court ruling on coal dust; on grounds of urbanization, shifted dusty cargoes to Kamaraj Port
Mar 2017: Supreme Court ruling: that from April 1 vehicles not BS IV compliant could no longer be registered
2016: Waste Management rules(Plastic, e-waste, biomedical, hazardous, construction, and solid waste)
2017 National Health Policy: “An important focus area of the urban health policy will be achieving convergence among the wider determinants of health – air pollution, better solid waste management, water quality, occupational safety, road safety, housing, vector control, and reduction of violence and urban stress
1994: Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Notification, institutionalizes a space for public participation through a process called Environmental Impact Assessment
June 2017: Niti Aayog Draft National Energy Policy. Critics claim this should have had a health impact assessment framework built in; there is a need for baseline emissions inventories and source apportionment of urban air pollution that can inform future interventions and provide measurable indices for the future.
2007 Tamil Nadu Protection of Tanks and Eviction of Encroachment Act, enables focus on “restorative” environmentalisms
May 2007: Tank Encroachment Act. Ignored or reversed long-established policies guiding slum clearance in TN and vested unprecedented powers in PWD and District Collector’s Office to effect evictions, entirely bypassing the TNSCB
Feb 2017: Central Electricity Authority (CEA) gives 300+ thermal power plants
2-5 yr reprieve from adhering to the strict air pollution standards mandated in 2015; sets in place roadmap for the
plants to install essential pollution abatement technology earliest by
2020 instead of doing so by end 2017.
2015: MoEFCCmandates new SO2and other emissions standards for Thermal Power Plants, to come into effect by 2017. [Part of EPA 1986]
TIMELINES: law + policy
Presenter
Presentation Notes
National Health Policy 2017: An important focus area of the urban health policy will be achieving convergence among the wider determinants of health – air pollution, better solid waste management, water quality, occupational safety, road safety, housing, vector control, and reduction of violence and urban stress June 2017: In recent years, regulatory action and court mandates have been demanding technology upgrades and ameliorative action for this sector like never before. This has impacted the bottom lines of energy related companies as well as energy prices. The NEP clarifies the Government’s stand on air quality concerns, with a view to convey its position so that the industry can take appropriate steps, while assuring the citizens of air quality concerns. Energy use and environment are closely linked. As per India’s Biennial Update Report (BUR), nearly 75% of GHG emissions came from energy sector in 2010. The poor air quality in India particularly in urban centres where energy is used in concentrated areas, calls for bold action through energy policy as a part of the overall environment strategy. While climate change is a more complex issue of global dimension, but local air quality is a direct outcome of domestic actions.
April 2016: Death by a Thousand Cuts:Report of privately organized (?) Public
Hearing Held On Loss of Ecology and Fisheries Livelihood in Ennore Creek
2004: Save Pallikaranai was a successful initiative to raise awareness on one of Chennai’s biggest marshlands and build a consensus to protect them. This was possible due to the joint efforts of local RWAs, IT employees, NGOs, environmentalists, TNPCB, and the support of the media
Aug 2016: Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs Report 198: Disaster in Chennai caused by Torrential Rainfall and Consequent Flooding. Identifies water body encroachment as culprit and asks State to “check mafia” involved in illegal construction
April 2016: Unfit To Breathe, Coastal Resource Center report on air quality around the thermal
power plant cluster in Ennore. Samples collected from rooftops of residential homes of 4 villages: Kattukuppam, Mughathwara Kuppam, Athipattu
and Ernavur.
April 2017: Unfit to Breathe II, follow up to 2016 study, air samples collected from 11 locations in North Chennai and Chennai city—including Poe’s Garden & Boat Club.
May 2017: Chennai added to “Unmask My City” global initiative via a series of community images around Ennore
2004 & 2005: Gas Trouble, Reports documenting air
toxicity in the “toxic industrial corridor” around the State
Industries Promotion Corporation of Tamilnadu’s(SIPCOT) area Cuddalore, by
Community Environment Monitors. Use of “odor mapping” to translate community data into
measurable baselines & identify sources
May 2017: TNPCB Public Hearing on 2016 EIA Report, considering viability of TANGEDCO Thermal Power Replacement Plant
Sept 2016: TM Krishna’s ‘Poromboke padal’released by Vettiver Collective as part of campaign to save the Ennore Creek and the Kosasthalaiyar river; raises awareness on the misuse and destruction of ecologically vital wetlands by industries and the government, and to problematic classifications of wetlands as wastelands
2016: TNPCB EIA on Replacement Thermal Power Plant Released but not publicised
reports
campaigns/events
