Hi Everyone, Just Shutting Down the three polluting units in the Cuncolim Industrial Estate is not good enough. The owners of these units should bear the costs of cleaning up the contamination they have caused or face rigorous imprisonment for life. Such heavy metal and solvent contamination caused birth defects and even death in the case of nearby residents in Silicon Valley in the 70s - 80s due to the contamination caused by early companie in the 60s - 70s. see link for details: http://www.pubs.asce.org/WWWdisplay.cgi?8501937
So before any such serious health problems come up in Cuncolim, the owners of these polluting units should be made to pay for and conduct the cleanup of the ground around the polluting units. And stringent EPA-type guidelines should be imposed on these units. The health effects of these ground water pollutants on the local population should be closely monitored. The bureaucrats and the politicians who sanctioned permission for these units to operate while continuing to pollute the groundwater with deadly heavy metals like Zinc, Cadmium, Copper and Nickel and deadlier solvents should also be thrown out of office unless they take responsibility for cleaning up the pollutants and have the area be tested to be contaminant free. Otherwise a Catastrophic Environmental disaster is waiting to happen and impact future generations of Cuncollekars living in that area. Best Regards, Dr. Carmo D'Cruz, Velkar, IITian, Indian Harbour Beach, Florida. 3 polluting units at Cuncolim shut PANJIM: Three polluting unit at the Cuncolim Industrial Estate have been told to shut shop by the Goa State Pollution Control Board yesterday. Bowing to pressures from Cuncolim residents, the GSPCB was forced to issue closure notices to Sunrise Zinc Limited after it had decided to issue such notices to two other units - Nicomet Industries Limited and Karthik Alloys Limited. The Board found 15,000 tons of waste in the industrial estate, which can cause leachate and can damage the fields. It proposed to conduct ground water analysis for cadmium, copper and nickel. [GT] _______________________________________________ Goanet mailing list Goanet@lists.goanet.org http://lists.goanet.org/listinfo.cgi/goanet-goanet.org