Sterlite plant reopening cleared by National Green Tribunal

CHENNAI: The National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Friday cleared the reopening of the Sterlite copper smelter plant in Tuticorin.

The plant, which has a capacity to produce 4 lakh tonnes of copper annually, was shut on March 30 following an order by the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB) over an alleged gas leak. “Sterlite can resume operations within a week in the presence of a court-appointed committee,” said Justice Swatanter Kumar of the NGT, in an interim order. The plant can restart after fulfilling certain conditions, the judge said. A final order on the case would be issued after July 10.

The NGT set up an expert committee headed by Professor P S T Sai of the IIT-Madras. The panel found the emissions from all the stacks at the Sterlite’s unit to be “within the permissible limit” prescribed by the Central Pollution Control Board when the plant was in normal operation.

The committee visited all the ambient air quality monitoring stations, maintained by both Sterlite and Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB) before arriving at the conclusion. The sampling and analysis of the ambient air quality were independently done by Sterlite and the TNPCB. “The analysis results by both the parties were almost similar, and the emissions were well within the permissible limit,’’ the expert committee has said in its report.

The plant will take at least four days to commence operations after receipt of the green tribunal order, a plant official told TOI.