Ennore residents have raised concerns over the recommendations of the technical committee constituted to inspect the ammonia leak from an industrial pipeline, on December 26, 2023.
In an official release on Sunday, the committee asked the company - Coromandel International Limited - to replace the ammonia pipeline and upgrade to a fully automatic control system with interlock facility at all necessary points in the ammonia plant and ammonia unloading pipeline. The committee attributed the possible reason for the leak to relocation of granite boulders around the under-sea pipeline, which it found to be not secured properly after Cyclone Michaung.
The committee consisted of R. Kannan, Member Secretary, TNPCB, B. M.Poornima, Central Pollution Control Board, Chennai, Shankar Narasimhan, Professor, IIT-Madras, S.V. Srinivasan, Senior Principal Scientist, CSIR-CLRI, C. Saravanan, Principal Scientist, CSIR-NEERI, M.V. Karthikeyan, Joint Director, Directorate of Industrial Safety and Health, and D. Vasudevan, Joint Chief Environmental Engineer, TNPCB Chennai Zone.
The release, which lacks information on the rate of release of ammonia during the leak, suggests that before every pre-cooling and ammonia unloading process, the firm shall do a pressure test using nitrogen gas. This step was not done when the leak happened, an official from DISH told The Hindu.
Bhagath Singh, a representative of Ennore People Protection Group, questioned why the panel has made safety suggestions to a company that has been running for over nearly decades, instead of clearly stating the failings that led to the accident. “Not even having an emergency preparedness plan is a blatant violation of law,” he stated.
Nityanand Jayaraman, environmental activist, said everything in the committee’s recommendations such as the Hazard and Operability study, emergency preparedness plans, are already mandatory under the Environmental Impact Assessment and the Manufacture, Storage and Import of Hazardous Chemical Rules, 1989 respectively. “Not only has there been no due process in allowing the firm [with an ammonia tank] to be located in a residential area but there also has been no enforcement of law,” he added.
Meanwhile, locals are awaiting response to information on Coromandel’s ammonia shipment, the emissions from the unit, its emergency response plan, etc., sought on January 19 through the Right to Information Act under the life or liberty section, for which the deadline is 48 hours.
