Vijayawada: An expert committee is to inspect the plant set up by Uranium Corporation of India Limited, to find out whether the chemical sludge being generated by the plant is contaminating groundwater tables and having an impact on crops at Thummalapalle in Vemula mandal, Kadapa district.
The state government directed the AP Pollution Control Board to set up a committee of experts drawn from NGRI, Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, AP Mines and Geology, AP departments of ground water and agriculture and also from IIT, Tirupati.
The PCB is to constitute the expert committee in three days, and the committee has to inspect the plant at Thummalapalle and submit its report to the state government in 10 days.
It may be mentioned that Kadapa Member of Parliament, Y S Avinash Reddy, and retired chief scientist K. Babu Rao had complained to the APPCB that UCIL was not complying with the rules on handling industrial effluents generated by its plant that mines and processes uranium. Accordingly, the APPCB issued guidelines to UCIL to comply with the rules. UCIL failed to do so, and APPCB served a show cause notice to it. Responding to the notice, UCIL merely said that the measures initiated earlier to handle the industrial effluents were sufficient.
The state government then directed the APPCB to constitute an expert committee and get the plant inspected and submit a report.
