City Council works to avoid Bhopal disaster

Honoring the 25th anniversary of the largest industrial disaster in human history, the Bloomington City Council passed a resolution that aims to prevent such an event from happening locally.

On Dec. 3, 1984, on the site of the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, 125 gallons of water flowed through a pipe that was supposed to be empty. It leaked into a tank containing methyl isocyanate, a toxic chemical that is highly reactive to water.

The tank, not designed to withstand this pressure, began leaking poisonous gas, which quickly spread throughout Bhopal. More than 2,000 people died that night from exposure to the gas or were trampled in the chaos that ensued.

Death tolls vary, but the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal estimates that more than 20,000 people have died and 100,000 more still suffer severe illnesses as a result of exposure.

The American-owned Union Carbide company was never forced to clean up the site and has not been tried in American or Indian courts for its role in the disaster.

To commemorate the disaster, the Bloomington City Council declared Dec. 3 “Bhopal day.” It also passed a resolution calling for the development of a report on the current state of toxic waste in Bloomington.

Council member Steve Volan, who sponsored the resolution, said the anniversary of the Bhopal incident made him wonder if Bloomington could be at risk for a similar disaster.

“I wondered what would happen if toxic substances were to be released because of a tornado or an earthquake, natural disasters that Indiana is prone to,” Volan said.

The report will aim to find out where there are toxins, what could be done to eliminate them, who is responsible for putting them there and how much has been done to remedy the hazard, Volan said at the meeting.

The report would not necessarily identify new problems. It is instead meant to catalogue information that is already collected in different offices and agencies across the city.

The Emergency Planning and Community Right-To-Know Act, passed by the federal government after the Bhopal disaster, requires companies to report toxic chemicals stored at their facilities to state and local authorities, so they could respond appropriately to a spill. One function of the report is to centralize that information.

The Bloomington Environmental Commission will develop the report, with expected completion Dec. 3, 2010.

Mike Tosick, vice chair of the Commission, said there are no specific plans for implementation yet, but the Commission will discuss possible approaches in its upcoming meeting.

“Our plan is to take this on as a priority for next year, forming committees and subcommittees around it, with the intent of supplying the city with a usable report,” Tosick said.

Bloomington’s most widely known environmental toxin is polychlorinated biphenyl, or PCB, a chemical that was used to insulate electrical capacitors in the 1970s. When the capacitors broke down, they were typically buried in landfills, allowing PCBs to leak into the soil and nearby water supply.

Tosick said PCB is the most likely toxin to show up in the report, but he said the Commission could identify “hot spots” of mercury, remnants of historical spills or even storage tanks that were buried and forgotten.

“This is a tall task for the committee that takes it on because we are essentially starting from scratch and inventing the process,” he said.

Saurabh Ajmera, president of the local chapter of the Association for India’s Development, spoke about the Bhopal disaster at the Bloomington City Council meeting last week, urging it to pass the resolution.

“Twenty-five years later, Bhopal is still defined by disaster,” he said. “We should do everything we possibly can to avoid such a catastrophe.”