Troubled Waters of Assam

TROUBLED WATERS OF ASSAM 2

Little did Goodenough realize during his constant urgings to the workforce “Dig boy, dig” in 1857, that he has started digging watery graves for the pristine water resources of a rainfall blessed state called Assam.

Today the Digboi refinery is run by the Indian Oil Corporation and is said to be the largest commercial enterprise of India. The refinery produces 650,000 metric tones of crude oil every year. Assam produces about 15 percent of India's onshore crude, with state-owned exploration companies, Oil India Limited and Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited and Indian Oil Corporation's refineries.

“For more than 40 years, oil companies have been polluting the state like anything," said Jawahar Lal Dutta, chairman of the Assam Pollution Control Board. The oil industry had for over four decades been destroying resource-rich areas through deforestation, pollution and preventing tree regeneration by not cleaning up spillages.

Water pollution is immense given the huge canvas available in a rainfall rich state like Assam. About 8251 sq km, which is 10.5% of the total geographical area of the State, is occupied by surface water bodies. Of this about 6503 sq km is occupied by the river systems including the mighty Brahmaputra and 1748 sq km by natural wetlands. The total surface water resource of the State is thus estimated at about 600 billion cubic metre. The annual replenishable groundwater resource of the State has been estimated as 27.23 billion cubic metres.


On expected lines, the paragraph ‘Pollution and Environment’ in the State water policy of Assam of 2007 reads “In project planning, implementation and operation, the preservation of the quality of the environment and the ecological balance would be a primary consideration. Adverse impact, if any, on the environment would be minimized and off-set by adequate compensatory measures. Effluents will be treated to acceptable levels and standards before discharging them in natural streams and other bodies.” Still, the pollution of water resources by the powerful oil industries goes unabated and the following paragraphs paint disturbing graphic images of the same.

Surface water

A survey conducted by the Assam Remote Sensing Application Centre (ARSAC), Guwahati and the Space Research Centre, Ahmedabad has revealed that 1,367 out of 3,513 wetlands in Assam are under severe threat due to a host of reasons of which oil pollution is a major one. "Our wetlands have turned into wastelands and majority of them are in a dying state," claims D C Goswami, head of department of environmental sciences at Gauhati University. These wetlands are the reservoirs of many migratory birds, mammals, fish, amphibians and reptiles, and many plant species.

Refineries discharge bio-chemical waste such as oil and grease, phenolic compounds and sulphide into the Brahmaputra river and its tributaries, well above permissible limits.

Oil spills and leaks, which are equally common as the fuel price hikes, allows oil to find its way through rice fields killing all synergistic soil bacteria and thereafter into the main drain fondly called as Brahmaputra. The invisible thin film on this river blocks all Oxygen possible getting into the water suffocating the planktons and endangering aquatic life in totality.


Oil pollutants, such as hydrocarbons, entering the aquatic environment may lead to large-scale and sudden kills of animal life especially fishes. The resulting damage may include immunosuppression, physical damage to gills and epithelia, and adverse affects on metabolism. Also, there may well be increased susceptibility to various infectious diseases, including lymphocystis and ulceration (Brian Austin, 2007). Gangetic river dolphins locally called xihus are critically endangered and protected under schedule I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972. Conservationists say there are just about 268 xihus fighting a losing battle for survival in Assam's vast river networks. Since refineries started in 1960, Brahmaputra Porpoise dwindled from a million to near zero today. Though there are no scientific studies on the effect of oil pollution on Brahmaputra’s aquatic life, equally pertinent studies in tropical Africa indicate that large-scale alteration of habitat was caused by oil-industry related pollution as seen in the habitat use of four species of freshwater turtles (Pelusios castaneus, Pelusios niger, Pelomedusa subrufa, Trionyx triunguis) in River Niger of southern Nigeria between 1996 and 2004. The numbers of turtle specimens observed during this period declined drastically (Luiselli et al., 2006). IUCN has rated oil pollution of Assam wetlands as a major threat to avifauna like white winged ducks. Oil coats the feathers of wintering birds, reducing their insulatory properties and causing death due to hypothermia. On lake shores, oil coats plants preventing photosynthesis. It covers the gills of fishes interfering with feeding and respiration.

Species richness, Shannon diversity, biomass and number of taxa of algal communities in a stream polluted with oil refinery effluent at Digboi showed significant negative relationships with the levels


of pollution (Singh and Gaur, 1988). On similar lines, a research report from Chesapeake Bay (USA) affirms that a substantial portion of grasses like S. alterniflora in a marsh was killed by the oil pollution; the remaining portion evidenced sublethal effects including delayed development in the spring, increased density, and reduced mean weight per stem. The second annual cohort of shoots, usually produced in late summer and early fall, was suppressed almost entirely. Oil which entered the roots and rhizomes of dead S. alterniflora was retained in a relatively undegraded state for at least 7 months (Hershner and Lake, 2004).

Oil contamination induced significant shifts in the structure of the indigenous bacterial communities in the soil at the bottom of water bodies as shown by ribosomal intergenic spacer analysis (Miralles et al., 2007). Lack of studies on the effect of oil pollution on microbes in India forces another example from Russia - The composition of natural microbial communities, including the distribution of different groups of microorganisms (including those able to degrade oil hydrocarbons) changed significantly within the areas of oil seeps in the Lake Baikal (Pavlova et al., 2008)

Levels of thirteen heavy metals like Fe, Mn, Ni, Pb, Cr, Cu, Zn, Hg, As and V in ponds/stagnated water bodies around oil well sites in Sibsagar district of Assam have been found to be above permissible levels (Sharma et al., 1995).

It is the custom of Assam Pollution Control Board (APCB) to warn unsuccessfully the Digboi authorities from releasing highly toxic effluents, including oil and grease, into waterbodies. The untreated effluents from the refinery cause extensive damage to freshwater diversity as well as water quality endangering life. Since November 1999, the APCB has served 14 notices to the refinery authorities, urging them to conform to pollution norms.


To make things still complicated, the bioremediation technologies followed by the industries are not effective. Allegedly, the oil does not separate with the famous IOC/TERI technology. Groundwater Groundwater is contaminated by dumping sludge in ponds and polluting rivers by discharging untreated effluents, posing health risks to millions of people. Pollution of soil with oil products from refineries first affects surface and sub-surface soil which accumulates pollutants. Water dissolves and washes down the oil hydrocarbons thus polluting the groundwater (Vasarevicius et al., 2005). Soil contamination with oil products threatens groundwater and drinking water quality. On contamination, soil acts as a permanent pollutant source and hence groundwater remediation is hardly successful. Damage of storage tanks and oil pipelines during conflict allows large quantities of oil and oil products to infiltrate into the soil and groundwater. Oil contaminated rainwater can infiltrate and reach the water table within a period of three to four days for average annual rainfall of every 120 mm (Al-Sulaimi et al., 2004). Once the groundwater is polluted; there are chances that nearby rivers especially the omnipresent Brahmaputra is also polluted through lateral movement because research reports indicate that contaminated groundwater is polluting the Danube river upstream through infiltration galleries in Novisad (UNEP feasibility report, 2007).

Agriculture

Surveys conducted around Madras Refineries Limited, India revealed the cumulative effects of oil pollution on plants. Damage was both immediate and long-term. The four categories of plant symptoms to oil pollution, typical of nutrient deficiencies include


yellow foliage, chloronecrosis, wilting and defoliation and leaf roll (Naidu, 2002) The effect of oil polluted water on agriculture is alarming as evident from the following research findings from other countries.

Crude oil contaminated irrigation water cause poor growth of crop plants due to suffocation of plants caused by exclusion of air by the oil or exhaustion of oxygen by increased microbial activity, interference with plant-water relationships and toxicity from sulphides and excess available Mn produced due to decomposition of hydrocarbons (Udo and A. A. A. Fayemi, 1975)

Reactions of higher plants (mustard, oat, rye, lettuce, dill and barley) to the contamination of water with oil and oil products showed negative effects with regard to germination of seeds, length of sprouts, dry biomass and length of plant roots (Petukhov et al.,2004). Conclusion India's economy has been growing at an average 8 percent over the past few years and the country is hungry for more energy. Hence it would be a futile exercise of hope and imagination, if we think that this galloping great nation is going to apply brakes for the sake of few grasses, fishes and poor human lives. More appalling than the well known indulgence of political bosses and bureaucrats, is the lack of academic and scientific interest on a subject that touches life, as there are no systematic studies of the effect of oil pollution in Assam. But hope is the mantra of life. And hence we see technologies (though copied shamelessly like bollywood music directors from other advanced nations) coming up like phyto remediation, bio remediation, electro coagulation and so on to save our rivers, ponds, lakes, water table and biological life from annihilation.


Since mature democracies believe that cure is better than prevention. References Al-Sulaimi, Viswanathan and F. Székely, 2004 Effect of oil pollution on fresh groundwater in Kuwait Environmental Geology 22(3): 246-256 Brian Austin, 2007 The Involvement of Pollution with Fish Health, NATO: Security through Science Series Pages 13-30 Hershner and Lake, 2004 Effects of chronic oil pollution on a salt-marsh grass community, Marine Biology 56 (2) : 163-173 Luiselli Godfrey C. Akani and Edoardo Politano, 2006 Effects of habitat alteration caused by petrochemical activities and oil spills on the habitat use and interspecific relationships among four species of Afrotropical freshwater turtles, Biodiversity and Conservation 15(11): 3751-3767 Miralles, David Nérini, Claude Manté, Monique Acquaviva, Pierre Doumenq, Valérie Michotey, Sylvie Nazaret, Jean Claude Bertrand and Philippe Cuny, 2007 Microbial Ecology 54 : 4 Naidu KC, 2002 Effect of oil pollution on certain plants under field condition, J Ecotoxico Environ Monit, 11(3): 195-203 Pavlova, T. I. Zemskaya, A. G. Gorshkov, V. V. Parfenova, M. Yu. Suslova and O. M. Khlystov, 2008 Study on the Lake


Baikal microbial community in the areas of the natural oil seeps, Applied Biochemistry and Microbiology 44: 3 Petukhov Fomchenkov, V. A. Chugunov and V. P. Kholodenko, 2004 Plant Biotests for Soil and Water Contaminated with Oil and Oil Products Applied Biochemistry and Microbiology 36 (6): 564-567 Udo and A. A. A. Fayemi, 1975 The Effect of Oil Pollution of Soil on Germination, Growth and Nutrient Uptake of Corn, J Environ Qual 4:537-540 UNEP Feasibility Report, 2007 Vasarevicius S, Greicuite K and Siaulyte E, 2005 Investigation and evaluation of oil products in intensively used military areas Journal of environmental engineering and landscape management 23 (4): 160-166

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