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Officials in India have removed large amounts of toxic waste from a chemical plant in India that caused the world’s deadliest gas leak 40 years ago.
A court in December set a four-week deadline for the waste to be disposed of.
On Wednesday, the toxic waste – about 337 tonnes – was taken from the Union Carbide plant in the central Indian state of Bhopal to a treatment plant about 230km (143 miles) away.
It will take between three and nine months to clean up and dispose of the waste.
Thousands of people he died in December 1984 after inhaling toxic fumes from the factory.
Since then, the toxic material has lain dormant in the mothballed factory, contaminating groundwater in the surrounding area.
Toxic waste removed from the factory this week included five types of hazardous materials – including pesticide residues and “permanent chemicals” left over from its manufacturing process. The drug gets its name because it remains toxic forever.
For years, these chemicals from the abandoned factory were slowly seeping into the surrounding area, posing a constant health hazard to the people living in the neighborhood.
A 2018 study by the Indian Institute of Toxicology Research revealed that high levels of metals and chemicals had contaminated the groundwater in 42 settlements near the factory.
After decades of inaction, the Madhya Pradesh state High Court on December 3 set a four-week deadline for authorities to dispose of toxic waste at the site.
The court said that the authorities “are still in a difficult situation even after 40 years”.
The work to pick up the garbage started on Sunday when the government officials started packing it in airtight bags. The bags were loaded into 12 trailer trucks on Wednesday.
Officials said the waste was collected under strict security.
There were police escorts, ambulances, firefighters and a rapid response team along with garbage trucks, the Indian Express reported.
Swatantra Kumar Singh, head of Bhopal’s gas supply and processing department, told news agency PTI that initially, some of the waste would be incinerated at the Pithampur landfill and the residue would be analyzed as toxic waste.
He also said that a special plan has been put in place to ensure that the smoke from the boiler or the ash left behind does not pollute the air and water.
However, activists and people living near the landfill have been protesting against it.
He also said that a small amount of waste from the Carbide plant was destroyed at the site during a test in 2015, the Hindustan Times reported.
They ended up polluting the soil, the groundwater and the fresh water of the nearby villages.
But Singh has denied this.
He said that burning toxic waste would not harm the nearby villages.
Over the years, officials have made several attempts to dispose of the waste at the Bhopal plant but abandoned their plans after facing opposition.
In 2015, India’s pollution watchdog said toxic waste would be incinerated in Gujarat but the plan was scrapped after protests.
The agency later identified locations in Hyderabad and Maharashtra, but faced similar challenges.
The Bhopal gas disaster is one of the world’s worst disasters.
According to government estimates, about 3,500 people died within days of the gas leak and more than 15,000 over the years.
But activists say the death toll is too high. Victims continue to suffer from the effects of poisoning even today.
In 2010, an Indian court convicted seven former factory managers, giving them light fines and short prison sentences. But many victims and campaigners say justice has yet to be done, given the scale of the tragedy.
Union Carbide was a US company that Dow Chemicals bought in 1999.
