An eco disaster called bauxite mining

Dear Friends,
Please read my article "An eco disaster called bauxite mining" which appeared in the Times of India on 31st August 2014 under Waltair Musings. I am pasting the scanned article as well as the word document below. Please feel free to comment.

Vizag is surrounded on three sides by the gorgeous green Eastern Ghats. City folk driving through these hills are captivated by the scenery, the cool climate and the thick deciduous forest cover fed by rain bearing monsoon winds from the Bay of Bengal.  The Adivasis live here in perfect harmony with their surroundings, as they have done for thousands of years.  Many are now literate, send their kids to school, are immersed in agriculture and animal herding during the day and get a good night’s sleep after sundown. A life they do not want to exchange with any one of us.

The curse of bauxite

The curse of these hills is a reddish, porous, rock called “Bauxite” named after the village Les Baux in southern France where it was first found to contain aluminium in 1821. Bauxite is first processed to alumina and then refined further to aluminium, the metal used to make our dum biryani dekshis and aircraft bodies. So what’s wrong with bauxite mining? Plenty! Mining by nature is a dirty business. If it is done in a central Australia desert with no people or trees in sight it’s probably OK, but if it’s done in our ghats effecting thousands of square miles of lush old oxygen-rich forests filled with primitive tribes, flora and fauna, it’s a recipe for disaster. Here’s why …

The players & the field

A total of seven bauxite rich areas have been identified for mining. The ones nearest us are Jerela near Chintapalli and Galikonda near Ananthagiri. During YSR’s rule two big players emerged. “ANRAK”, a joint venture of the government of Ras Al Khaimah is putting up a refinery at Makavaripalem near Narsipatnam. They plan to use the bauxite from Jerela. Another company - “Jindal South West” plans to set up a refinery at Bodavaram on the Araku foothills to process the bauxite from Galikonda.

Rumble in the jungle

The mining companies plan to gouge out the bauxite from the hills and process it, on site, to alumina. Alumina is separated from the bauxite by using a hot solution of caustic soda (sodium hydroxide) and lime (calcium oxide). The alumina is then to be transported down to the foothills where it will be further processed in humungous aluminium refineries and smelting plant to aluminium.  Around 5 tons of bauxite will give 2 tons of alumina and just 1 ton of aluminium! What’s left behind is 4 tons of red mud soaked in a cocktail of chemicals. In Jerela alone (the biggest bauxite reserve) the plan is to extract 4.5 million tons of bauxite every year for forty years! So we will end up with around 126 million tons (8.4 million lorry loads) of red mud killing off our forests, destroying agricultural land and choking off an ancient Adivasi way of life. If this doesn’t horrify you read on…

Impact on water

Bauxite has the tendency to absorb and hold rain water. So when it rains in the hills the bauxite acts like a reservoir, storing and releasing the water gently into the streams. Removing the bauxite will cause the water mixed with red mud and rocks to flow downhill unrestricted, washing the topsoil away with it. Gushing red streams would meet fast flowing rivulets and barrel downhill into our farm lands and reservoirs ruining them. Keep in mind that we get 1200 mm of rainfall in the hills as compared to only 800mm in the plains. Massive deforestation and human activity will reduce rainfall in the ghats and eventually one of our most important sources of water would be gone for ever.

Thirsty monsters

Aluminium refineries are thirsty monsters; they need astronomical amounts of water in the refining process. Seven mining areas when they become operational will consume 15 million cubic meters of water per year, enough for a town of 10 lakh residents. The irony is that on one hand the industry will choke off our water sources and on the other hand it will consume the water meant for our cities and our agriculture. Still not horrified? Read on …

Transportation nightmare

After dumping the waste red mud in the neighbourhood forests, the Jerela mine alone will have to transport 1.35 million tons of alumina every year from the mine head to the plains near Makavaripalem near Narsipatnam. This will require 10,000 trucks loads plying up and down the hill every year for 40 years! This will kick up 2 million tons of dust every year making it a road to hell. Normal vehicular traffic for transporting people and farm produce will be get squeezed out. Thousands of traffic accidents will ensue. Then they will want to widen the road and end up lakhs of trees along the way. Imagine the impact on the villages, the weekly “santhas”, the livestock and the generations of people who live and earn along these roads.

Politics, economics, social & environmental issues

While the state government looks to it as revenue for overcoming a dismal financial situation and making some private moolah on the side, there is much more to be said about this dirty industry. They include the legality of private mining in an agency area, fair mining royalty shares, naxal threats, CRPF deployment, easy corruption, lax enforcement of environmental laws, global bauxite and aluminium pricing and so on. All are important, but they pale into insignificance when we consider the cost of environmental degradation. The mines are not going anywhere; we can leave them for a more technologically advanced, intellectually mature and less corrupt future generation. Bottom line, bauxite mining in our ghats today is like shooting ourselves in the head.