Chromium in water upends life in an industrial neighbourhood

For the past two months, 55-year-old Gangubai Laxmigan Shivale has been feeding her family on food bought from outside. “There is constant itching, and blood pours out if I scratch the rashes on my hand, so I can’t cook,” says Shivale, a resident of Dattanagar, a residential area next to the Ambad industrial estate on the outskirts of Nashik city in Maharashtra. “We are a family of four, and we all sustain on samosas, vada pav and other food from outside.”

She is one of around 400 residents of Dattanagar who have reported severe rashes, chemical ulcers, swollen lymph nodes, black lesions and other skin problems, which they attribute to contaminated groundwater. When residents draw water from their borewells, it runs bright yellow into their buckets.

A laboratory test of water from a borewell adjoining stream of Nandini river near the city’s Ambad industrial area validated their concern. It found chromium at more than 1,000 times the permissible limit for drinking water. The test was commissioned by the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP), a non-governmental organisation and carried out by Ashwamedh Engineers and Consultants, an independent laboratory. The sample showed total chromium of 50.5 milligrams per litre (mg/L), of which 50.3 mg/L was hexavalent chromium. The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) allows only 0.05 mg/L of chromium in drinking water.

A separate analysis by the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB) found chromium at 45 mg/L in two groundwater samples from borewells and dug wells, about 900 times the limit permissible in drinking water.

Locals link the pollution to the electroplating industry in the nearby area, which gives jewellery, taps, vehicle parts and phone fittings their shine.

“There are various legal and illegal electroplating, metal finishing and powder coating industries in the Ambad MIDC area. The untreated effluents from Ambad MIDC go directly into the catchment of the Nandini river, while from Satpur MIDC, the untreated waste runs off into streams that merge directly into the Godavari,” says Rajesh Pandit, a Nashik-based activist. He filed a petition in the Bombay High Court in 2012 and more recently in the National Green Tribunal (NGT) against the discharge of untreated industrial effluent in the area.

Treatment costs mount

Residents describe constant itching, wounds that ooze blood and fluid, and a burning sensation when the affected skin is exposed to sunlight. Many say the itching keeps them awake at night, and treatment is draining their savings.

Shivale says her husband is the family’s only earner. “The medical expenses for one person come to ₹5,000 to ₹6,000 a month,” she says. “As long as we take medicines, we find some relief. The moment we stop, the itching comes back and so do the rashes. We can’t take medicines for a lifetime,” says Kunti Balu Sarkate, 35, a resident of Dattanagar.

Preeti Shah, 30, lives in Kusum Mangal apartment in Dattanagar. She says contaminated water has affected her skin for six months, and she has been treated two or three times at a private skin clinic.

Most residents of Dattanagar are working-class families, and many work in the Ambad MIDC industries. Many of them claim that they are spending nearly half their monthly income on private treatment, wound dressings and alternative accommodation.

Safe water still out of reach

Preeti Shah says that until a few weeks ago, she and her neighbours used borewell water for everything except drinking, because the municipal corporation’s supply was limited and irregular. Since the information about the contamination came to light, the civic body has sealed the borewells and arranged water supply through tankers, along with municipal water.

But safe water still doesn’t reach every household. On October 24, Sarkate and her neighbours received no municipal supply. “We don’t have enough storage of clean water,” she says. “We have no option but to use the contaminated water in the toilet.”

At Kusum Mangal apartment, the Nashik Municipal Corporation (NMC) has been supplying enough water only for the past few days, Shah says. Before that, everyone had to find drinking water wherever they could, she adds.

Nearly four months ago, Shah’s family, despite having their own flat, rented a separate house just to access safe drinking water. They pay ₹5,000 to ₹6,000 a month in rent.

“We get a better supply of water in the chawl, and there is a motor,” says Shah. “Every morning, all the women who are affected in the family go and bathe in the rented house, wash clothes there and fill buckets from there. We then travel back to our own house with those buckets to prepare food, clean utensils, etc.”

Their problem is not limited to accessing fresh water or treatment costs. Residents say their wounds looked alarming at first, with rashes and chemical ulcers oozing blood and fluid. It led to discrimination.

Sangeeta Jadhav, 45, shares her experience. She was on a bus when a woman sat beside her. “She asked me why I was scratching my hand. When she saw my rashes and wounds, she got up and sat away from me.”

Chanchal Rahul Dehad, another Dattanagar resident, says her daughter and Shah’s daughter were told by their teachers to stay home until the “infection” cleared. “The teachers were afraid it could spread to other students.”

Residents say doctors at a local medical camp and at Nashik Civil Hospital examined them from a distance and asked them to stand back, without touching them. Some residents don’t see it as discrimination. They say teachers and doctors simply didn’t know enough about the new health problem.

The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has taken suo motu cognisance of the contamination. Citing a media report, it notes that children in the area had been advised not to attend school, and that doctors had advised women to avoid pregnancy.

A contamination threat beyond Dattanagar

Activists who are pursuing the issue say in a statement Dattanagar’s contaminated water does not stay in its borewells. They say it reaches the Godavari through the Nandini river and the nallahs that feed it. The Simhastha Kumbh Mela flag-hoisting ceremony is scheduled for October 31, and millions of pilgrims are expected to bathe in the Godavari on the main bathing days in 2027.

Hexavalent chromium, also called chromium-6 or Cr(VI), is classified as a Group 1 carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organisation (WHO). This means there is sufficient evidence that it causes cancer in humans.

Yet Girish Mahajan, Maharashtra minister and Nashik’s guardian minister, claims the yellow chemical detected in groundwater from Dattanagar borewells was not carcinogenic.

While talking to Mongabay-India on October 23, Vidyasagar Killedar, regional officer of the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB) in Nashik, says the river is unlikely to be affected. “This issue of contamination is in groundwater, so there is little to no possibility of it contaminating the Godavari, as it is 150-200 ft deep,” he says. “NMC has upgraded its sewage treatment plants (STPs), and all the nallahs that meet the Godavari are being diverted to them. Once the water is treated, it will be released into the river.”

Activists and petitioners dispute this. They say Cr(VI) has been found above permissible limits in the nallah that joins the Nandini, and at the confluence of the Nandini and the Godavari. These samples were taken days after some industrial units were shut, which suggests chromium is still entering the water, they said in a statement.

Fourteen years in court and the effluent still flows

Industrial pollution of the Godavari has been before the courts since 2012, when a public interest litigation (PIL) was filed in the Bombay High Court. The petitioner complained that Nashik’s two industrial estates, Satpur and Ambad, had no common effluent treatment plant (CETP) for their waste, and that the river was being used to dump both industrial and domestic waste.

The High Court directed the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) to set up CETPs in Ambad and Satpur and to act against units that broke the rules.

“To date, they have not complied with this order,” says Pandit. “Their non-compliance has contributed to untreated industrial discharge contaminating the river to this extent. Small-scale industries don’t have their own effluent treatment plants. They discharge untreated waste into soak pits in the ground, which affects the groundwater.”

Last year, Pandit filed a contempt petition alleging that MIDC had not complied with several of the court’s directions, including the one on the CETP. In an affidavit, MIDC told the High Court the plant would be running by the end of September this year. That deadline has passed. Killedar now says it will be ready by the end of November.

After the Dattanagar contamination came to light, Pandit and others took the matter to the NGT’s Western Zone Bench in Pune on October 16. The tribunal asked MPCB and the Nashik district collector to submit a report within four weeks on what action they had taken. It also directed the collector to provide drinking water in the affected areas.

An NMC survey, launched after residents complained about discoloured water and health problems, covered 8,887 households and 34,399 residents. Of the 229 borewells it mapped, 45 were yielding yellow, contaminated water.

MPCB says it has acted against polluting units. “In the last 15 days, we have closed 22 industrial units. Six were given directions, 10 were given show-cause notices, and two closed voluntarily,” says Killedar. The board has also begun inspecting areas just outside the Ambad MIDC for other units releasing untreated waste.

“In a meeting with the collector along with experts, the technique of bioremediation was proposed to tackle this issue,” says Killedar.

For now, residents deal with skin ailments, irregular water supplies, medicinal expenses and severe exposure to chromium. They demand a permanent solution to this decade-long issue.

Banner image: Water from the taps run yellow in Nashik. Image by Esha Lohia.

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