The Goa Coastal Zone Management Authority cleared the naphtha pipeline on Baina beach on recommendations given by the National Institute of Oceanography and the Tata AIG management Services, which proved wholly unreliable and erroneous. Says GCZMA member Claude Alvares.

WAY BACK IN 1999, Zuari Industries Ltd (ZIL) filed an application before the Goa Coastal Zone Management Authority for approval to lay a new dedicated naptha pipeline to transport naphtha from Mormugao Port to its factory at Sancoale. The new pipeline was to replace the 30-year old pipeline which, the Company stated in its application, had deteriorated and had become a public hazard.

However, for reasons not known, the company withdrew the proposal the same year.

Thereafter, a new consortium called the Zuari Indian Oil Tanking Ltd (ZIOL) was formed and it presented a revised proposal at the end of 2002 to the Authority for permission to lay a 20-inch pipeline from MPT to Sancoale. The proposed alignment of the new 20-inch pipeline would take it transverse across 800 metres of the Baina beach. (The older, existing pipeline was only 6 inches in diameter and found itself at Baina under a series of hutments.)

The Coastal Authority promptly objected to the location of the pipeline across the beach. The minutes of its 10 th meeting record that “the new pipeline alignment, proposed within the inter-tidal zone of the Baina beach, was not agreed to as an abundant precaution to avoid any possibility of danger to the general public using the beach as well as to avoid deterioration of the beach ecosystem.”

After detailed deliberations, the Authority granted approval for the pipeline “under the condition that the proposed new 20-inch pipeline, within the CRZ stretch of Baina, shall follow the same alignment as that of the existing 6-inch naphtha pipeline which is to be de-commissioned.”

This order did not satisfy ZIOL and a few months later it once again approached the Authority to review its earlier order. Its plea was that the hutments would have to be removed and the people rehabilitated and this exercise would take considerable time. It repeatedly stressed the fact that the existing pipeline was over 30 years old, it had developed a lot of leakages and was likely to give way at any time (though that did not stop the Zuari Industries from continuing to use it, with scant regard for public safety!)

ZIOL further bolstered its case for locating the pipeline on the beach by producing three technical reports from experts in favour of the project. The experts were the National Institute of Oceanography and Tata AIG Risk Management Services. The Authority gave me the task of writing an opinion on the three reports.

PRACTISING BAINA SCIENCE? : The NIO at Dona Paula.

Perusing the reports, I found that all three of them contained absolutely nothing on the environmental impact of the 20-inch pipeline on the Baina beach ecosystem even while they pontificated about everything else instead. This prompted the company to subsequently produce two additional technical reports, from the same experts – the NIO and the Tata AIG Risk Management Services Ltd – which the company claimed dealt exclusively with the environmental and public safety impacts of the new pipeline on Baina beach (covered by the CRZ notification).

So, altogether there were a total of five expert reports (all costing several lakhs) in support of the project before the Authority when it met at a specially called meeting on May 2, 2003 to consider the proposal anew. I was not present at this meeting (being out of station at the time). However, I had already submitted a written note opposing the location of the pipeline on the beach area as being thoroughly inadvisable.

At the meeting, however, the ZIOL officials convinced the Authority that they were going to follow international best practice in the laying of the pipeline. Further, the NIO affirmed in writing, that, “Studies done by NIO show that the Baina Beach area is not showing any significant erosional signatures. The buried depth (2.5m) and the bay environment make us believe that the pipe line will be safe and no erosional effect will be felt at that depth of burial.”

The NIO claimed that it had set up three observation stations on the Baina Beach and the studies indicated that seasonal erosion was in the region of 0.5 metres and since the pipeline was to be buried at a depth of 2.5 metres, there was absolutely no cause for worry.

The Authority was still not satisfied about the erosion of the beach and the danger in pipeline exposure and queried the NIO again. The NIO replied: “The very fact that the pipeline is buried below 2.0m will ensure the safety of beach goers.” And it added for good measure: “The company (ZIOL) will ensure that the pipeline will never be kept exposed even in most extraneous and adverse conditions.”

That is how the Authority reluctantly granted its NOC for the new alignment. Last week, the entire beach segment of the massive ZIOL pipeline rose from its grave 2.5 metres below the surface to make a mockery of both the NIO and its scientific expertise and of the Tata Risk Management Services as well.

When the Authority met on 23 rd July, 2004 it was shocked to see the illustrated report on the front page of Gomantak Times, which showed the pipeline completely exposed above the surface of the beach and it unanimously decided to issue a stop work order under section 5 of the Environment Protection Act to ZIOL to stop the use and operation of the pipe line with immediate effect. The order was served on ZIOL on July 27, bringing all pumping through the pipeline to a complete halt.

ZIOL has been directed not to re-use the pipeline again till the conditions imposed by the Authority (when it cleared the project in May 2003) are fulfilled. Primary among these is the requirement that the pipeline be 2.5 mts below the ground. In order to prevent sand being plundered from other areas of the beach or other beaches to cover up the pipeline, the GCZMA has specifically forbidden ZIOL from such activities entirely.

What can one learn from this rather costly error? More important, can so-called experts be trusted any longer? Neither of the two expert institutions – the NIO and the Tata Risk Management Services – even faintly visualized a situation in which the huge pipeline would resurface entirely from its location underground.

In fact, till the time of writing, the Coastal Authority still did not have any clue about the exact reasons why the huge pipeline re-surfaced. Experts now say it could have been due to sea erosion. Does anybody seriously believe that three metres (nine feet) of sand were evacuated by the sea in the first two months of this monsoon to expose the pipeline? Others hazard the guess that the pipeline – buoyed up by the air in it when empty – rose on its own the moment sea water covered it entirely.

Did the two organisations deliberately decline to convey this possibility for fear that the project would not get approved? For it is doubtful that the Authority would have ever approved the pipeline if it had been given even a premonition of what has come to pass today on the Baina beach. The most amazing aspect of the entire episode is the statement made in the Tata report that the pipeline wouldbe grouted. How then could it have floated? In other wordsm, did ZIOL bypass elementary procedures in laying the pipeline?

The reports from the two organizations involved in the environmental and safety studies have undoubtedly severely damaged the reputations of both organizations and clearly brought their credibility into question. The GCZMA can be faulted only for accepting these sponsored reports as impartial appraisals of the situation. Authorities like the GCZMA do not necessarily have experts on them who can decide every technical issue placed before the Authority. In such cases, the Authority calls for Environment Impact Assessment and Risk Assessment reports from reputed institutions.

Earlier, these institutions gave independent reports as they were financed by the government with grants. Present day policies of the Central Government now require institutions like the NIO to raise a good deal of their own resources for running their operations. The result is these institutions now see themselves as private businesses, eager to earn. The only people who can pay, and pay well, are companies who are anxious to get their projects through and need EIAs. Since the company is paying for the EIA, the assumption always is that the EIA should support the company’s project. The job of the scientist is therefore to find the appropriate science to justify the project. This is a fairly simple logic, and it rules. After all, the institution has to survive. It appears therefore that in such circumstances, our great public institutions have wholesale degenerated into project approving bodies. The good reputation generated over the last three decades is now routinely encashed to earn money for the institution by writing wholly worthless EIAs based on incompetent, uncreative and glib science.

I recently had occasion to read the so-called EIA reports produced by the same organization for the IFFI-related projects. In the first IFFI-related study produced before the GCZMA on May 10, 2004, the NIO scientists, in their anxiety to accommodate the project (and ensure future business), actually end up recommending that the city of Panaji should have additional bridges and roads!

In the past month, the Goa government has demolished the huts of a large number of women on Baina beach whose only fault was they were selling their bodies for payment. Pray, what should we do now about eminent institutions who also prostitute themselves for a hefty fee? Science today has become more indecent than the poor women of Baina. After the present debacle, I suggest that it be given a new name: Baina science.

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