Kolkata chokes as Dhapa fire rages unchecked for five years

KOLKATA: A fire raging continually for at least five years at various locations in the city’s largest dump yard, Dhapa, has been identified as the biggest contributor to Kolkata’s spiking air-pollution levels.

This fire — out of sight and, therefore, out of mind — may be even more dangerous to the city’s long-term health than the practice of stubble-burning across farms in Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, which has been blamed for Delhi’s rising pollution levels, say environmentalists. Stubble-burning may have a greater geographical reach but the Dhapa fumes contain a far more potent cocktail of toxic pollutants because of the vast range of waste materials that go on burning in this open-air incinerator throughout the year.

Smoke from burning waste at Dhapa dumpyard.

Fish farm workers and rag pickers living on the edges of Dhapa say they saw smoke emerging from the dump for the first time around 2013. But the footprint of the fire has gone on increasing over the years and the emerging smoke has grown denser and more acrid. “The smoke is an almost all-year phenomenon except for the two heavy-monsoon months. The fire is raging constantly deep in the dump’s core,” Gour Das, a resident of Unchopota village to the east of the mountain of rubbish, said. “It’s just that the burning core expands and the smouldering flames become visible in the dry season. The acrid smoke spews out and smothers the entire locality, making breathing difficult, round the year,” he added.

Dumpyard fumes worse than vehicular emission: Scientists

The damage to human lungs is not confined to people staying on Dhapa’s fringes. A wide swathe of Kolkata’s population — on EM Bypass’s western flank from Ultadanga to Chingrighata to Ruby and beyond — is affected by this cocktail of noxious gases. Many have to taken to just keeping their windows shut throughout the year. But the situation deteriorates in winter, when the dipping temperature and the fog keep pollutants close to the ground, making it difficult for people staying in this belt to even step out after dusk.


“The entire EM Bypass stretch gets enveloped in a thick of layer of smoke — unbreathable and suffocating — nearly every evening this season. We just run to catch a bus to escape the foul air,” said Ankita Sharma, an employee of an FMCG firm located near Ruby crossing.

Environment scientists at the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (Neeri), who are conducting a pollution apportionment study in Kolkata and Howrah, say the effect is not restricted to just this belt but contributes significantly to the city’s worsening air quality. There is no air quality monitoring station on EM Bypass to measure pollutants spewing out of Dhapa, but West Bengal Pollution Control Board chairman Kalyan Rudra admitted they get swept across the city, especially when the northerly winds blow into Kolkata in winter.

“The effect of air pollution is far more widespread, unlike noise pollution that impacts the immediate surroundings,” Rudra said. He has written to the Kolkata Municipal Corporation on the need to douse the fire. KMC officials admit there has been no attempt to control the fire yet, which would be a mammoth challenge given the volume of garbage that has been dumped at the site for decades.

All this has contributed to the city’s ever-worsening pollution levels. The daily average air quality index at the Victoria Memorial monitoring station touched 389 in December despite being located in the middle of the city’s largest green belt, the Maidan. “The smoke emitted from Dhapa is responsible for the unusual spike in air pollution recorded at the Victoria Memorial Hall station more than 10km away,” said emission expert Somendra Mohan Ghosh.

Environment activists say the debilitating effect of the fire raging under the surface has been most pronounced in 2018, indicating that it has gained critical mass. “For the first time, I have had to wind up the car’s window whenever it hit EM Bypass in December 2018. The air is choking. It turns the air toxic for rest of the city as well,” said environmentalist Subhas Datta, who has been the main mover behind many of the city’s green norms.

The fire will never be short of fuel, given that 4,500 tonnes of unsegregated garbage are dumped at Dhapa daily and the putrefying mass releases the highly inflammable methane. Locals corroborate this expert view, saying the fire has spread to multiple locations within the the 23-acre yard.

Inhaling fumes from the dump 24x7 is far worse than exposure to vehicular emission, say scientists. “The garbage at Dhapa is everything that we should never burn. The white smoke contains ultra-fine particulate matters like dioxins and furans,” said Calcutta University chemical engineering professor Amitava Bandyopadhyay.

“Air containing such harmful chemicals can cause chain reactions in our bodies, right from disrupting our endocrine system (causing sexual disorder) to cancer,” explained preventive care expert Debasish Basu.