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The Black Coast

Grim tidings from the Mumbai oil spill

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The Black Coast
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A Toxic Brew

  • The collision between two ships off Mumbai has resulted in an environmental catastrophe
  • There is a humongous oil slick
  • Mangroves along the coast have suffered. So too has marine and bird life.
  • It may take months to clear the slick, locate oil containers. The clean-up is very expensive.

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In Mumbai’s Geeta Nagar slum, at the island-city’s southern-most point, residents spent the week ending on Independence Day scrubbing clean the oil deposits and muck from the narrow alleys leading to their homes. The waste was washed in by sea water after the morning of August 7, when two Panamanian cargo carriers, MV Khalijia III and MSC Chitra, collided 10 km off the Mumbai coast. The latter listed sharply, resulting in a large oil spill. Now, patches of oil have coated the Marine Drive promenade. Further south, in coastal villages of Uran taluka, horrified villagers watched as an oil slick spread across beaches.

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And this is only the most evident footmarks of the ecological disaster that Maharashtra state and central agencies are still coming to terms with. The catastrophe stopped navigation for five days to and from both ports in Mumbai—Mumbai Port Trust (MbPT) and Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JnPT)—that account for nearly 45 per cent of India’s export traffic. It also contaminated fish catches, led to a suspension of all fishing activity, killed and maimed birds and marine life forms, gravely affected mangroves along a 100-km coastline from Mumbai all the way to Raigad, not to mention the ever-spreading, toxic oil spill. Union environment minister Jairam Ramesh termed it “a grave disaster”.

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Clean-up operations on the sea and along the coast could take months, say officials at the Coast Guard and Maharashtra Pollution Control Board. There is little clarity yet on the extent of damage; in fact, a month or two will pass before the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute and the National Institute of Oceanography submit their impact assessment reports.

The force of the collision cracked open the MSC Chitra, ran it aground, and sent about half of its 530 containers (holding 2,262 tonnes of oil) into the Arabian Sea. The leak formed a thick film of oil over a 2-3 km radius. Containers were carrying about 100 MT of furnace oil, and some 30 containers had hazardous materials. “About 100 of the 250 containers which fell into the sea are yet to be traced,” says MbPT chairman Rahul Asthana.

“India has never had an oil spill of this magnitude,” says Jairam Ramesh. “The polluter must pay.” This is easier declared than done. Since India is not a signatory to the Bunkers Convention, it will be virtually impossible to seek compensation under international law. Further, the polluter has to be identified and his “crime” established. It cannot be said with certainty which ship-master was at fault. Mumbai police records show masters of both ships asserting that they did not receive any communication from the Vessels Traffic Management System for two minutes before the collision. However, port officials on local tugs provided as escort to the ships have said that MV Khalijia III re-entered the navigation channel after exiting it and continued to turn even after sighting the other ship, suggesting technical failure on board.

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The clean-up operation will involve huge expenditure. “The Maharashtra government has paid a few lakhs, but we have asked ship owners to put in Rs 2 crore before we can negotiate damages. Clean-up is costly, but some damage could be permanent,” state environment minister Suresh Shetty told Outlook.

Shetty was referring to the “extensive damage” to vast stretches of coastal mangroves, which act as a natural bio-filter for Mumbai. The sole positive glimmer: the National Oil Spill contingency plan of 2006, which requires ports to have Tier-1 facilities to tackle such accidents has finally been activated.

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