It was a little before 9 am on Tuesday morning as Vascocelebrated the stoppage of coal loading and unloading operations on MPT’s BerthNos 10 and 11. A railway rake covered in shiny blue tarpaulin containingimported coal quietly sneaked out through the Vasco Railway Station.“Operations are closed only for Berth No 10 and 11 but elsewhere the operationsare normal,” confirms P Mara Pandiyan, Chairman, Mormugao Port Trust. Theclosure is a temporary reprieve. The bigger fight lies up ahead.
After October 2014, MPT will be handling a cumulative 17million metric tonne per annum of coal every year. The coal handling operationsmay technically be mechanized but Vasco will be handling almost four times thecurrent quantity of the ‘dirty cargo’. The coal being imported under Goa’ssunny and dry weather turns brittle. Despite spraying of water, the coal willcontinue to extend in the air above Vasco. Coupled with the fact that all thecoal berths Nos 5A, 6A, 7, 10 and 11 fall in the line of sea breeze blowinginto the city waves of coal clouds.
What is even worrisome is that to dampen the coal dust, MPTwill be requiring 30 litres of fresh water per tonne of coal to dampen it. Thiswould mean a whopping 510 million litres of fresh water per annum. For a city,that suffers acute water shortage even in monsoons this volume is unimaginable.MPT’s defence that it uses its recycled water does not sound convincing.
One of MPT’s perennial defenses has been the example ofRichard’s Bay coal terminal where a city straddles the huge coal berths.Richard’s Bay has world’s largest but zero pollution facility thanks toinvestment in stringent pollution check measures. “That technology isexpensive” says MPT Chairman P Mara Pandiyan on record to The Goan. What iseven more shocking is that the proposed giant domes on Berth Nos 10 and 11 tocompletely cover the coal and take it indoors has been done away with. “Thecost of the dome would itself had come to Rs 250 crores and the whole costwould be doubled and was not agreed uponby the port users”, explains Mara Pandiyan.
MPT’s partner in crime is GSPCB. The Goan’s enquiry revealsthat GSPCB despite its’ current muscle flexing has been a yes-man agency to thePort. All the EIA that has been carried out for MPT’s expansion is only‘studied’ not scrutinized by GSPCB. GSPCB has not been monitoring coal at BerthNos 5A and 6A or asking questions about Berth No 7. Vasco needs a permanentstation for monitoring all pollution. The current closure appears more playingto the gallery with room for legal recourse.
