What’s Going on With the Chennai Oil Spill Clean-Up?

In the middle of all the confusion about who is responsible for the clean-up, the situation has gotten worse.

(Photo: Abhay Sharma)

Judging by the way the Indian Coast Guard and Tamil Nadu government are dealing with the recent oil spill, you would think India had never dealt with an oil spill before. Volunteers are literally scooping up oil bucket by bucket.

So what’s going on?

There’s a pretty straight forward way to clean up oil spills. You need to isolate the spill by surrounding it with tire tubes and then use machines that vacuum up the polluted waters.

The problem is, you can’t sit around figuring out who is responsible for the clean-up! India has a contingency plan to deal with this – a plan was drawn up back in 1996. And where are we two decades later? In the middle of an environmental disaster, while different government bodies shuffle around, not wanting to bear the cost.

There’s the Indian Coast Guard, the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board, the Chennai Corporation, the Chennai Port Authority, the Tamil Nadu Fire & Rescue Dept, and the Water & Sewage Board, but no clarity who’s in charge, who’s going to bear the initial costs.

So instead of power in numbers, there is just confusion.

Of course, we see visuals of very dedicated volunteers trying to do their bit, forming human chains using bucket.

But that’s too little, too slow. The spill continues to spread. Recent reports suggest 72 kilometres of Tamil Nadu coastline are affected.

The Coast Guard and Sewage Board say their vacuum suction machines can’t handle such a bad spill. How is that possible? This is not the worst oil spill ever! So then, why do we have technology that can’t do the job?

India has a contingency plan to deal with oil spills – drawn up back in 1996. And where are we two decades later? In the middle of yet another environmental disaster!

Newsflash: The oil isn’t going to politely sit around to sort ourselves out. The time to act was many many days ago.

Video Editor: Purnendu Pritam