As Indians try to save a river, officials deny problems

Eloor smells like it is dying.

Once it was an island of rich farmland on the Periyar River, 17km (10.5 miles) from the Arabian Sea and teeming with fish. Now, a putrid stench permeates the air. Most of the fish are gone. Locals say people living near the river are hardly even having children anymore.

Yet here is Shaji, alone in his small fibre boat, fishing with his handmade rod, the southern Indian state of Kerala’s massive industrial smokestacks behind him.

About 300 chemical companies belch out dense fumes, and the river water has turned dark. Shaji, a fisherman in his late 40s who uses only one name, is among the few people who remain.

“Most of the people here are trying to migrate from this place. If we look at the streets, it’s almost empty. There are no jobs, and now we cannot even find work on the river,” said Shaji, displaying the few pearl spot fish he managed to catch during an entire day in March.

Many of the petrochemical plants here are more than five decades old. They produce pesticides, rare earth elements, rubber-processing chemicals, fertilisers, zinc-chrome products and leather treatments.

Some are government owned, including Fertilisers and Chemicals Travancore, Indian Rare Earths Ltd and Hindustan Insecticides Ltd.

Residents say the industries take in large amounts of freshwater from the Periyar and discharge concentrated wastewater with almost no treatment.

Anwar CI, who uses initials for his last name as is the custom in southern India, is a member of a Periyar anti-pollution committee and a private contractor who lives in the area. He said residents have grown accustomed to the reek that hangs over the area like a heavy curtain.

The groundwater is now fully contaminated, and the government’s contention that the businesses benefit people is wrong, he said.

“When they claim to provide employment to many people through industrialisation, the net impact is that the livelihood of thousands is lost,” Anwar said. “People cannot make a living from ruined land and water.”

Residents have periodically protested against the factories. Demonstrations began in 1970 when the village first witnessed thousands of fish dying. Both die-offs and protests happened again many times after that, said Shabeer Mooppan, a longtime resident who has often demonstrated.

Some of the early protest leaders are elderly now and bedridden, Mooppan said, emphasizing just how long people in the community have been trying to get the river cleaned up.

Now Mooppan is trying to improve surveillance, to catch those responsible for fouling the river. It is a method used for rivers and bays in other cities around the world. He is also pursuing legal cases against polluting industries.

The state Pollution Control Board has downplayed the industrial pollution in the Periyar River, blaming it on sewage from homes, commercial institutions and markets upstream.

“We have not found any alarming rate of metals in the river water,” said Baburajan PK, the board’s chief environmental engineer. “All the levels are within the limits.”

Baburajan said only five major companies of the more than 300 industrial plants in the region are allowed to discharge wastewater into the river, and it must be treated. The rest must treat their wastewater, reusing or disposing of it on their own land. He said hefty environmental levies have been imposed on violators.

But research tells a story of a river in distress.

As far back as 1998, scientists at the Kerala University of Fisheries and Ocean Studies found about 25 species of fish had disappeared from the region. Experts have found contamination in vegetables, chicken, eggs, fruit and tuber crops.

Chandramohan Kumar, a professor in chemical oceanography at Cochin University of Science and Technology, has researched Periyar River pollution in several studies.

“We have observed pollution from various organic fertilisers, metallic components,” Kumar said. “Toxic metals like cadmium, copper, zinc and all the heavy metals can be detected there.”

India has an environmental court called the National Green Tribunal. A decade ago, it ordered the government to create an action plan to restore water quality in the river to protect the environment and public health. It also ordered the formation of a monitoring committee.

More recently, the tribunal was worried enough to initiate its own proceedings on the pollution. It cited studies going back to 2005 carried out by the environmental non-profit group Thanal that showed “hundreds of people living near Kuzhikandam Creek at Eloor were afflicted with various diseases, such as cancer, congenital birth defects, bronchitis, asthma, allergic dermatitis, nervous disorders and behavior changes.”

The court cited another survey of 327 families in the region that showed hazardous chemicals – including DDT, hexachlorochyclohexane, cadmium, copper, mercury, lead, toluene, manganese and nickel – had been discharged into Kuzhikandam Creek and harmed the health of people in Eloor.

Kumar said the remedy for this pollution is on-site treatment at each facility, which comes down to money. “If they are ready to invest, the effluent discharge can be resolved,” he said.

The Pollution Control Board said it had recently begun a study that could lead to curbing air pollution and reducing the intolerable stench in the area largely caused, it said, by bone meal fertiliser factories and meat rendering plants. The study is expected to be finished in May.