NHRC registers case after residents complain against WTE plants in Kodungaiyur

The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has filed a case following complaints by residents against the proposed waste-to-energy (WTE) plants in Kodungaiyur in North Chennai.

Federation of North ChennaI Residents’ Welfare Associations president T.K. Shanmugham said the struggle against WTE plants will continue in the city.

The complaints were based on the research conducted by Mohan, of the Foundation for Friendly Environment and Medical Awareness and Madhuvanthi, on the impact of WTE incineration in north Chennai.

Residents point out that the State government and the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) plan to set up WTE plants in low-income neighbourhoods with a sizeable number of socially disadvantaged sections.

Pointing to a documented global pattern of locating waste-to-energy incinerators in neighbourhoods predominantly inhabited by low-income groups, indigenous people, and other oppressed communities, the residents complained that the proposal had been made despite them holding a series of protests.

While the primary survey did not collect caste data from the respondents, an analysis of the 2011 Census ward-level data by environmental researcher Nityanand Jayaraman showed that the Scheduled Castes accounted for 23.8% of the population in wards surrounding the Kodungaiyur dump yard, significantly above the city-wide average of 16.8%.

Class dimension

There is also a class dimension that is more discernible in the case of Chennai, the complaint said. Chennai has two dump yards, Perungudi in the south, serving Zones 9 to 15, and Kodungaiyur in the north, serving Zones 1 to 8. However, the Perungudi dump yard is being fast-tracked for closure because, as the GCC’s own Clean Air Action Plan (2022) states, “many prestigious commercial infrastructures were established within two km of the periphery”, referring to the IT corridor.

Due to the proposed closure of the dump yard in Perungudi, the Kodungaiyur site, which is part of a 400-acre marshland, has now been earmarked to receive waste from all the 15 GCC zones and host a new mega incinerator capable of burning 2,100 tonnes of waste a day.

According to the study, 48% of the respondents in the area report spending above ₹1,000 per month on medical treatment. This is a significant sum considering the north Chennai demography, which comprises a high concentration of working-class Scheduled Caste and Other Backward Caste communities with no equivalent political leverage.

The residents have demanded that the GCC permanently shut down the 50 Metric Tonnes Per Day incinerator, take immediate steps to remediate the Kodungaiyur dump yard, cancel all new WTE incinerator proposals across Tamil Nadu, including those for a 2,100-tonnes incinerator in Kodungaiyur, a 1,500-tonnes incinerator in Tambaram, and the Coimbatore incinerator committed by the previous government.

The NHRC is expected to carry out an independent comprehensive impact assessment covering human rights, community health, environmental, and socio-economic impacts of all the existing and proposed WTE facilities in Tamil Nadu, with meaningful community participation and public disclosure, and ensure immediate, and fair remedy for communities living in the vicinity of waste incinerators in Tamil Nadu, especially eight affected neighbourhoods surveyed around Kodungaiyur.