Cause of Giaspura tragedy ‘difficult’ to establish: NGT

Nitin Jain

Ludhiana, October 13

The National Green Tribunal (NGT)-appointed panel to probe the Giaspura gas tragedy reported that the actual cause of the incident was “very difficult” to establish.

“The actual cause of this happening is very difficult to establish since the exact similar conditions, which prevailed at the time of incident, could not be recreated,” concluded the eight-member fact finding committee headed by PPCB chairman Adarsh Pal Vig.

Freak incident

Terming the gas leak tragedy a freak occurrence, the committee said such an incident had never been reported in the past.

The 397-page report, a copy of which is with The Tribune, was submitted to the NGT after conducting an inquiry for over five months.

The sudden release of high concentration of hydrogen sulphide (H2S) gas from a manhole in Giaspura on April 30 had claimed 11 lives, including five of a family, and had left four injured.

Taking suo motu notice of the incident, the NGT Principal Bench, headed by then chairperson Adarsh Kumar Goel and comprising then judicial member Sudhir Agarwal and executive member A Senthil Vel on May 2 ordered the formation of the panel to submit a report on or before June 30.

However, the committee kept seeking time and finally submitted the report on Wednesday. The panel said it was evident from the facts furnished by various departments that the particular stretch of the sewer in front of the tragedy site was behaving quite unnaturally as compared to upstream and downstream points as well as the rest of the sewer lines.

“Such behaviour could be attributed to a variety of factors, like structural incongruences and irregularities of the sewer/ damaged sewer infrastructure being a 20-year-old sewer design, sludge deposition at the bottom due to ineffective sewer clean up and heavy sewer loads, temporary blockage might be due to some solid material brought along with heavy rainfall on the preceding day leading to stagnation/ very slow sewer stream velocities, or a combination of all these factors,” the committee found.

It observed that the sludge deposition due to accumulation and built-up/ sedimentation of matter/ particles over a long period of time in front of the tragedy sites in the presence of anaerobic conditions might have led to the generation of H2S.

“Sudden turbulence and disturbance of lower sediments/ slime layer due to heavy rain on the preceding day leading to generation of undetected H2S and its release might also be one of the exacerbating factors,” the report read.