The recent revelation of some units involved in fish meal and fish processing business in the Cuncolim Industrial Estate of digging borewells to release their waste is not something that has happened overnight. Ground Penetration Radar (GPR) survey of four fish meal and fish processing units provided evidence of borewells being dug at the premises of these units, flouting all laws.
Although the above incident speaks volumes of the care-a-damn attitude of the unit owners, who have cocked a snook at all parameters put in place by principles and judgments involving environmental laws, it also smacks of an attitude that they could get away with murder.
In fact, one of the units under investigation was found to have not less than ten points within its premises that released its hazardous industrial waste into the ground water, contravening all norms and rules. What is more appalling is the fact that the promoters of the unit also secured a court order to restrain the fact finding team from Goa State Pollution Control Board from furthering their probe, in an apparent apprehension that there was threat that some parts of the unit could be demolished by the investigators!
For years now, there have been reports from the Pollution Control Board, that one has read in newspapers, suggesting that the ground water levels in Cuncolim have been contaminated. For a State that enjoys first world living standards, it is imperative that we also bring in first world environmental principles.
The Cuncolim incident is a precursor or maybe a mirror to how some industry black sheep look at the natural terrain of our land – many of who sadly, look at their industrial empire akin to a colonial conquest.
The world is mature enough to know and understand the need of industrial development and job creation. We also have enough safeguards in place to understand that one cannot play havoc with the environment in the garb of industrialization. Treatment of effluents and wastes, in a way that they could not damage the land of Cuncolim, is a cost that these industrial units have clearly saved at the expense of a larger destruction to the ecology, some of which may be irreversible.
The citizens of Cuncolim have been urging the government and its elected representatives, for some years now, to pay heed to the wrongdoings towards the environment. Clearly there were attempts to stall the fact finding due to political pressure exerted to insulate some of these unit owners. Now, with a change in political equations, these units may have come under the radar of investigation.
Political interference should not be the reason why environmental polluters should be pulled up or let go for their crimes against nature. The Goa State Pollution Control Board should be given more powers and latitude and make it truly autonomous, without any political influence and appointments. It should also find adequate representations from civil society. The Board should create a template to identify red zones in industrial estates and establishments across the State and take strong action against wrongdoers. This is a good time to bring in a legislation, with teeth, to injunct and penalize these villains, who under the garb of industrial growth, have been putting the natural resources of our State at peril.
The Supreme Court, way back in 1987, while expanding the idea of ‘absolute liability’ which is enshrined in the ‘polluters pay’ principle, ruled that any enterprise must be held to be under an obligation to provide that the hazardous or inherently dangerous activity in which it is engaged must be conducted with the highest standards of safety and if any harm results on account of such activity, the enterprise must be absolutely liable to compensate for such harm.
The State administration should pursue serious legal and punitive action and seek exemplary penalty and criminal liability against such environmental wrongdoers, who are playing with the life of Goa and Goans.
Harshvardhan Bhatkuly
