TAF Research Update September 5, 2017

Deepa Reddy, Aakanksha Kumar, Sudipta Mohanty

WORK IN PROGRESS: PLEASE DO NOT CITE WITHOUT EXPRESS APPROVAL FROM THE AUTHORS Image: Chennai Coastal Clean Up Mural on Gandhi Mandapam Ro NGT Interview Mapping TNPC B POLICY CPCB CIVIC ENVIRONMENTALI COMMUNITY STS Transport-Waste-Urban ACTION Development ORIENTED Civic Action Group GLOBAL/ ENTREPRENEURI CONSERVATIONIS AL ENVIRONMENTAL Chennai Smart City SPV, City TS JUSTICE ADVOCATES Connect, ITDP/Urban Works NATURALISTS Vettiver Collective, Other Media Inst Madras Naturalists, Nizhal, Care Earth Trust ENTREPRENE SOLID WASTE LABOR URS MANAGEMENT ORGANIZERS COMMUNITY LABOR OCCUPATION SOCIAL TECH RESARCHERS AL HEALTH Paperman Kabbadiwallah STARTU Connect PS AIR QUALITY RESEARCHE AirOK RESEARCHE INDOOR AIR RS RS AMBIENT AIR 2 Focal Points

1 2

3 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 Ennore played a major role in causing massive flood in Chennai. The 2 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-indian4 -cities-will-definitely-flood-again/story-KVxgIt0zyctNFO70EklYGJ.html Public Hearing, May 30 2017

5 Public Hearing, May 30 2017 Srini 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 for work. They came begging us. But now there is neither work nor livelihood.”

6 Public Hearing, May 30 2017 Nityanand Jayaraman:

The EIA prepared for TANGEDCO’s 660MW coal power expansion project in Ennore uses 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-7ash/ Unfit to Breathe Reports by The Coastal Resource Centre - A Campaign of The Other Media 2016 2017

Unfit to Breathe—A Report on Air Quality Around The Thermal Unfit to Breathe II—Air Quality and Pollution Levels in Power Plant Cluster in Ennore, Tamil Nadu Chennai City

In response to resident complaints of deteriorating air quality, air As a follow up of their air quality study in Ennore in 2016, samples collected from rooftops of residential homes of 4 collected air samples the following year in April from 11 villages — Kattukuppam, Mughathwara Kuppam, and locations in as well as Chennai city—including Ernavur. Poe’s Garden & Boat Club.

8 “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 Odai Kuppam (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/ 9 Caste vulnerability in Industrial Sacrifice Zones

Source: https://thewire.in/134553/ennore-air-pollution-fly-ash/ 10 Community Environment Monitors’ EIA Critique Summary

● 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.

11 “Unmask My City”

12 13 TIMELINES: law + policy 2017 National Health Policy: “An Mar 2017: Supreme Court ruling: important focus area of the urban May 2007: Tank Encroachment Act. 2015: MoEFCC that from April 1 vehicles not BS IV health policy will be achieving Ignored or reversed long-established mandates new SO compliant could no longer be 2 convergence among the wider policies guiding slum clearance in TN and other emissions registered determinants of health – air pollution, and vested unprecedented powers in standards for better solid waste management, water PWD and District Collector’s Office to Thermal Power quality, occupational safety, road Environment effect evictions, entirely bypassing the Plants, to come into safety, housing, vector control, and (Protection) TNSCB effect by 2017. [Part reduction of violence and urban stress Act, 1986 of EPA 1986]

2016: Waste Management rules 2007 Tamil Nadu Protection of (Plastic, e-waste, biomedical, Tanks and Eviction of hazardous, construction, and Encroachment Act, enables focus solid waste) on “restorative” environmentalisms

Feb 2017: Central Electricity Authority May 2011: (CEA) gives 300+ thermal power plants 2-5 yr reprieve from adhering to the June 2017: Niti Aayog Draft National ruling on coal dust; on grounds of Critics claim this should strict air pollution standards mandated Energy Policy. urbanization, shifted dusty have had a health impact assessment 1994: Environmental Impact in 2015; sets in place roadmap for the cargoes to Kamaraj Port framework built in; there is a need for Assessment (EIA) Notification, plants to install essential pollution baseline emissions inventories and institutionalizes a space for public abatement technology earliest by source apportionment of urban air participation through a process 2020 instead of doing so by end 2017. called Environmental Impact pollution that can inform future Assessment interventions and provide measurable indices for the future. Aug 2016: Parliamentary Standing Committee 2004 & 2005: Gas Trouble, April 2016: Death by a Thousand Cuts: on Home Affairs Report 198: Disaster in reports Reports documenting air Report of privately organized (?) Public Chennai caused by Torrential Rainfall and toxicity in the “toxic industrial Hearing Held On Loss of Ecology and Consequent Flooding. Identifies water body corridor” around the State encroachment as culprit and asks State to Fisheries Livelihood in Ennore Creek Industries Promotion “check mafia” involved in illegal construction Corporation of Tamilnadu’s (SIPCOT) area Cuddalore, by , Coastal Resource April 2017: Unfit to Breathe II, follow Community Environment April 2016: Unfit To Breathe Center report on air quality around the thermal 2016: TNPCB EIA up to 2016 study, air samples Monitors. Use of “odor power plant cluster in Ennore. Samples collected on Replacement collected from 11 locations in North mapping” to translate from rooftops of residential homes of 4 villages: Thermal Power Chennai and Chennai city—including community data into Kattukuppam, Mughathwara Kuppam, Athipattu Plant Released Poe’s Garden & Boat Club. measurable baselines & and Ernavur. but not publicised identify sources

2004: Save Pallikaranai was a successful initiative to raise awareness on one of Sept 2016: TM Krishna’s ‘Poromboke padal’ May 2017: TNPCB Public Hearing on 2016 Chennai’s biggest marshlands and build a released by Vettiver Collective as part of EIA Report, considering viability of consensus to protect them. This was campaign to save the Ennore Creek and the TANGEDCO Thermal Power Replacement possible due to the joint efforts of local ; raises awareness on the Plant RWAs, IT employees, NGOs, misuse and destruction of ecologically vital May 2017: Chennai added to “Unmask My environmentalists, TNPCB, and the wetlands by industries and the government, City” global initiative via a series of support of the media and to problematic classifications of wetlands community images around Ennore as wastelands campaigns/events