Vizag's black nightmare

VIZAG'S BLACK NIGHTMARE

Talk to anyone in Vizag and the single most irritating thing about living here is the ubiquitous coal dust pollution. This fine black powdery substance rises silently, like a ghost, from the port area and spreads its dark tentacles all over our city. It affects all of Vizag, from the densely populated old town in the South to the upmarket areas in the North of Vizag. As homes are swept each morning one can see the black powder accumulating on the floor at the end of the broom and our laundry on the clothes line is streaked brown by the time it dries. It settles on our cars and bikes and on our skin as we drive near the port area. Much of this pernicious dust gives us itchy eyes, allergic sniffles and most seriously finds its way into our lungs making us susceptible to respiratory infection and worse.

Historic problem

Vizag’s citizens have suffered due to this dirty cargo for years, they have complained, protested, objected, opposed, moaned, groaned and litigated for decades and yet things have not improved. We are paying the price for cohabiting with a dirty neighbour the Visakhapatnam Port Trust (VPT). Is there a solution to the problem? The current VPT chairman considered an intelligent leader and his executives at the port trust certainly know what to do. VPT has taken up several established procedures like spraying the coal heaps with water, covering the heaps with tarpaulin and building a wall around the stock yards. But that isn’t helping because the heaps are too high to be sprayed effectively, the tarps are too small to cover the heaps entirely and the walls are too low to stop the wind from blowing away the covers. What more can be done? Let us examine the issues and try to home in on the crux of the problem.

Coal imports

Coal is used mainly for power generation and for manufacture of steel. Despite having 306 billion tons of coal at our mines and 123 billion tonnes of proven reserves, enough for a hundred years, we still import around 180 million metric tonnes (mmt) of the stuff every year. That is because until recently, we were doing a sloppy job of mining and transporting the coal and our indigenous coal isn’t good enough and has to be blended with better imported coal. VPT handled around 16 mmt of coking, steam and thermal coal last year. This coal was meant to arrive at our port and be promptly sent off to the users by train. But this is not happening

Mechanical handling of coal

A few years ago VPT realized that the best way to reduce dust pollution was to mechanize the unloading and despatching operations. They made a deal with two major private players to set up sophisticated mechanical facilities in the outer harbour to handle bulk coal for big end users. Vedanta set up facilities for 10.2 mmt in December 2012 and Adani for 6.45 mmt in September 2014 under a Design, Build, Finance, Operate, and Transfer (DBFOT) arrangement.  Apparently they now unload ships using large rotary shovels; load the coal on conveyor belts which then carry the stuff to the rail head, here it is loaded into rail rakes for despatch to the end users. They were not permitted to handle the coal manually or transport it by road. Yet these terminals transport portions of coal by road to the rail head. The AP Pollution Control Board made it obligatory for these terminals to have a coal dust monitoring system to ensure that their dust generation was within specified limits but inexplicably these monitors have still not been installed.

Independent coal traders

Around that time, because of strong demand, independent coal traders began importing coal for sale to other users. The coal typically arrived in “Panamax” vessels with draught (the vertical distance between the waterline and the bottom of the hull) of 14.5 meters. At that time the channel leading in and out of our inner coal jetty could not take these vessels as the draft was inadequate. The port then decided to dredge the channel to deepen it. As it would take a year or so to do that the traders requested that they be allowed to offload part of the cargo at the outer harbour to reduce the draught of the vessel so that it could negotiate the channel to the inner harbour coal jetty. With this precedence even the new terminals were embolden to transport part of their coal by road.

Giant storage yard

Paradoxically while Vedanta and Adani, who invested Rs. 650 crores and Rs. 350 crores to build a total capacity of around 16 mmt, were told to shun manual handling, the coal traders were permitted to do just that. In addition they are allowed keep the coal temporarily in the outer harbour terminal from where trucks moved the coal by road, spewing dust along the way, to yards in the port area for storage at dirt cheap rates. The traders and the users benefit from this arrangement because the trader can stock the coal at little additional cost and the user need not pay for the coal till they pick it up. In effect the port started acting like a giant storage yard for coal.

Heaps of trouble

Shortage of rakes to evacuate the stored coal was a major issue so starting from allowing free storage for 10 days the port now allowed storage up to 8 weeks. Some of the coal was stored near densely populated residential areas and that exacerbated the problem. As Confucius says “big coal heap make your white underwear grey and your lung black like soya bean sauce”.  It is obvious that the more coal we store the more dust we will generate. So we arrive at the root of the problem, it’s all about the storage. If the port really cares for the city and its citizens it can discourage storage of coal anywhere in the port area. Modern businesses all over the world follow a JIT (Just in Time) policy. Why should we be penalized because a steel mill in Orissa keeps their coal at our doorstep for their convenience while blackening our fair city?

Fifty shades of grey

In the meanwhile the VPT have completed the deepening of the channel and it can now take the fully laden Panamax vessels. Technically there is now no reason for the coal trade to offload part of the coal at the outer harbour and for the mechanised terminals to transport coal by road at all. In fact the mechanised coal handling facilities still have spare capacity to handle all incoming coal in a clean way. But smaller operators and stevedores, those that have been handling coal manually for years, will face loss of business and their workers may lose livelihood. This is therefore a human problem as much as a technical and commercial one. If workers can be employed elsewhere in the logistics chain the port can dispense with the dirty business of manually handling, truck transportation and open storage of coal. Can we satisfy our smart city aspirations by cleaning up our act? There are obviously shades of grey to consider but black seems to have the upper hand now.