Bhopal's Wound

The Bhopal disaster occurred in 1984, but its drama is still playing out in India. The old Union Carbide site has not been properly cleaned up, residents living near the site complain of contaminated water, and no consensus has emerged on what to do with the land.

The population of the surprisingly pleasant city of Bhopal, located more or less in the center of India, has more than doubled since 1984 to 1.4 million. Where Carbide operated is now a prime site surrounded by vibrant, though mostly poor, residential neighborhoods.

In early December, on the 21st anniversary of the tragedy, activists in Bhopal organized demonstrations, memorials, and effigy burnings of former Carbide chairman Warren Anderson. The general message was that Dow Chemical, which acquired Union Carbide in 2001, has to clean up, or pay for a world-class cleanup, of the old industrial site.

"We want justice," says Satinath Sarangi, managing trustee of Bhopal's Sambhavna clinic. "We want the site to be cleaned up, Dow and Warren Anderson to present themselves in court, and Dow to accept to underwrite the cost of medical care and rehabilitation for people who were poisoned by the gas in 1984 and now by the water." Sambhavna is a nongovernmental organization that seeks to treat Bhopal victims through yoga sessions and other traditional practices.

Since the accident, survivors have demanded that those responsible be tried as criminals. They eventually settled on Anderson as the main target of their anger. Anderson has not been back to India since December 1984, when he was briefly detained by authorities. He is reportedly living on Long Island, N.Y.

As for Dow, activists are livid that the company claims it is not responsible for Carbide's environmental liabilities in Bhopal. Citing the "polluters pay" principle and Dow's commitment to Responsible Care, they say the company must take the lead.

Dow denies the activists' contentions. "Dow never owned or operated the plant, which today is under the control of the Madhya Pradesh state government," says Scott Wheeler, a public affairs manager at Dow. "The government of Madhya Pradesh, which today controls the site, is responsible for any remediation that may still be required." But Dow is not ignoring the Bhopal question. In 2002 and 2003, Sarangi and some Bhopal tragedy survivors attended Dow's annual general meeting. They also met with Dow Chairman William S. Stavropoulos in 2003, Sarangi recalls, adding that the meeting did not yield results.

Carbide paid $470 million in 1989 to settle with the Indian government, which agreed not to claim additional tragedy-related damages from the company. Since then, residents of Bhopal have filed a lawsuit in the U.S. that has gone through several appeals.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, where the latest appeal was heard, ruled that most of the claims are without merit, except those for environmental damage unrelated to the disaster. Earlier this month, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, which is now handling the case, issued a letter requesting India's Eveready Industries to provide documents dating back from the 1990s that may shed light on what, exactly, Union Carbide knew about the contamination of the site before it sold its assets in India to its local subsidiary. Eveready is the current name of Union Carbide India.

Little work has taken place since 1984 to rehabilitate the site (C&EN, Jan. 24, 2005, page 28). The plant still stands more or less as it was just after the accident. Eveready handed the site back to the government of Madhya Pradesh in 1998 after performing some remedial work. The company says its responsibility ended then.

Madan Mohan Upadhyay, principal secretary of the Madhya Pradesh government's Department of Public Health & Family Welfare, insists that the state has never cleared Union Carbide of its obligation to clean the site since it took back the lease in 1998.

The state government organized a superficial cleanup last summer. The state also mandated the National Geophysical Research Institute to test the area's water and the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute to test the soil. Future plans call for site cleanup and a memorial. But nothing has been finalized.

The poor quality of groundwater near the site is a bone of contention. That the plant site is contaminated and that it is polluting the groundwater used by nearby residents are some of the conclusions of a 1999 Greenpeace report that to this day remains one of the most authoritative surveys of the site available to the public. In 2004, the Indian Supreme Court sided with Bhopal residents, agreeing that the water near the former Carbide site was contaminated and ordering the Madhya Pradesh government to supply clean water to residents.

Some officials argue, however, that the pollution needs to be kept in perspective. According to P. S. Dubey, chairman of the Madhya Pradesh Pollution Control Board, the water quality near the site is no worse than the water found in ponds in the Indian countryside where pesticides collect.

"The quantity of pesticide in the water [in some wells in Bhopal] exceeds World Health Organization guidelines, but by a small margin," he says. Dubey was unable to provide the study on which he bases his conclusions. He adds that soil contamination, particularly in solar evaporation ponds where Carbide used to dump some of its production wastes, is a bigger problem.

Similarly, A. Krishna Reddy, a chemical engineer and pilot-plant manager at the Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, Hyderabad, believes that "after 21 years, there won't be much toxic material left to contaminate the ground." Reddy supervised the superficial cleanup of the former Carbide site last summer. He says his job was limited to removing material scattered on the ground by vandals and looters.

Recently, Cherokee Investment has shown interest in the former Carbide site. The U.S. investment firm specializes in buying contaminated sites, rehabilitating them, and selling them at a profit. Cherokee Chief Executive Officer Thomas F. Darden estimates that his company has so far turned around at least 500 properties, including 39 that were formerly owned by Borden Chemical.

Darden says he was surprised when he learned that, 20 years after the tragedy, the former industrial site had not been rehabilitated. Reasoning that cleaning such sites is what Cherokee does day-in and day-out, he went to Bhopal last fall to meet with activists, survivors of the tragedy, and government officials.

He says activists were suspicious of his motives. "They thought we were crazy to have the audacity of wanting to organize the cleanup and not get paid," Darden recalls. At least one activist believed he had been sent by Dow Chemical. "I don't know anyone at Dow," he says.

Cherokee's involvement in Bhopal would be charitable, Darden insists. "It's a firm principle we established before going to Bhopal: We don't want to benefit from this tragedy."

He explains that no Cherokee shareholder money would be involved in a cleanup but that the company, which routinely gives to charitable causes, would pay for a site survey made according to internationally recognized standards. He says Cherokee could also provide up to $1 million for a cleanup and find additional donors. Finally, Cherokee could advise Bhopal on how to manage the site once it has been cleaned up.

He does fear that the cost of cleaning up the site might exceed the amount Cherokee could collect from donors. The land on which the former Carbide site sits is large enough, however, to accommodate both a memorial to the accident and an industrial or commercial zone from which the government could draw revenues in the future. "We thought maybe it would be good if the cleaned-up site could provide some employment opportunities," Darden says.

Cherokee, however, is meeting opposition. Rachna Dhingra, a local campaigner for the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal (ICJB), says she welcomes Cherokee's offer to survey the site but not its offer to clean it up and establish an industrial zone. "Bring industry here again so we can have another accident?" she asks with a horrified tone.

Others also disapprove. Hazra Bee, a survivor of the 1984 tragedy and an ICJB supporter, says Dow must pay for the rehabilitation of the site. "We don't want anyone else to do the cleanup," she says. And in the interest of justice, Sambhavna's Sarangi says, "we want to set a precedent in forcing a multinational company to clean up their pollution. So, yes, we would oppose Cherokee's cleanup."

Meanwhile, activists are intent on preventing Dow's business expansion in India. Last year, they stopped Indian Oil Corp. from licensing an ethylene glycol process that Dow had acquired by merging with Union Carbide.

For the past few months, Dhingra has been gathering evidence that a Dow plant manufacturing the pesticide Dursban at a site south of Mumbai is polluting the environment. Activists intend to shut that plant down, although Dow says it's not affected by their actions. "We could not be more optimistic about the prospects for Dow Chemical International Ltd. to grow in the region," Dow's Wheeler says.

It is commonplace for emotions to run high in places where environmental disasters have taken place, Cherokee's Darden says. More than 21 years after the accident, feelings in Bhopal are still raw. It will be a delicate balancing act under these conditions to initiate any kind of cleanup. How the site will be cleaned up, who will pay, and what will happen to the land remain unanswered questions.