AHMEDABAD: A division bench of the Gujarat High Court directed for the appointment of a Court Commissioner to look into allegations of discharge of untreated trade effluents into the Tapi river by steel manufacturer Arcelor Mittal Nippon Steel Ltd (AM/NS) in Surat.
An exercise to determine “at which points AM/NS is discharging the trade effluents” and “the standards of the said effluents at the discharge points” was mandated by a division bench of Chief Justice Aravind Kumar and AJ Shastri on Monday, and the report was handed to the Director of the Indian Institute of Technology – Gandhinagar (IIT-Gn). The court issued notices to the Centre and state governments, pollution control bodies, the Surat authorities, and Arcelor Mittal Nippon Steel Ltd. on February 14. The case involves a public interest lawsuit brought by Roshni Patel, an Environmental Scientist.
But despite having more than four months to do so, the respondents have yet to react to the arguments made in the PIL. As a result, the court was compelled to name a Court Commissioner to examine the arguments. The PIL had observed that the company’s effluent disposal violates the zero discharge criteria set by the Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB) and the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC), Government of India, while issuing the environmental clearance in 2016 and 2010. It was also claimed that AM/NS illegally discharged industrial effluents from its Hazira facility in the Tapi estuary, including those containing acid, heavy metals, organic chemicals, high Total Dissolved Solids (TDS), and phenolic compounds. A Consolidated Consent and Authorisation (CCA) order from 2020, had also specified that the company should not discharge treated effluents into the surrounding environment and that it should be utilised at the factory for gardening and plantation purposes.
The petitioner claims that the discharge damages fish breeding and contributes significantly to water contamination. According to a study conducted in September 2021, by the Ahmedabad Textile Industry’s Research Association (ATIRA), the industrial effluents discharged into the water bodies did not meet the standards set by the MoEFCC. Additionally, it said that in 2020, the regional MoEFCC office had noted that AM/NS was not abiding by the zero effluent discharge condition.
The AM/NS counsel objected to the HC’s jurisdiction and argued that the National Green Tribunal should be the appropriate forum to hear the case. The court remarked that the Court Commissioner’s report would be an “essential piece of evidence available on record” and “be of the utmost value” to the NGT in examining the competing contentions.