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Published online 22 September 2009 | Nature 461, 459 (2009) | doi:10.1038/461459a
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The elephant and the neutrino
Conservationists challenge physics observatory in Indian wildlife reserve.
India's environment minister Jairam Ramesh will visit the site of a proposed underground neutrino laboratory next month, to try to break the impasse between physicists and environmentalists over its construction.
The US$160-million India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) was to have been completed by 2012 to study the elusive particles known as neutrinos (see Nature 450, 13; 2007.
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Conserving Natural resources is very important than the Space science. In India, most of the agricultural lands are taken by real estate businesses. If it goes on further, it will be difficult to feed 1.05 billion people. We must not spend money and space for some invisible particles by ruining our environment.
The south Indian state, Tamilnadu, already have lot of environmental problems. Huge amount of clothes are exported from the city of Tirupur in Tamilnadu to all over the World. This city is famous for textile factories. But not a single factory follows environmental safety procedures. They just dump the textile wastes in the river and lands. Lot of villages around Tirupur are affected by the textile wastes. Most of the wells in those villages are contaminated by toxic chemicals from the textile wastes. Now villagers have to find other source for drinking water or just to abondon their place.
Another environmental problem in Tamilnadu is Koodankulam 'Nuclear Power Station'. Now and then people living near the power station complaint about weird diseases/disorders among the children. People always fear about leakage from the power station. But power station authorities turn their complaints down by just branding those complaints as rumours.
There are lot of fields in Science for India to be expertised. Also there are barren lands in India to build Observatories.
Both local and central government of India has no idea/policy about Science. Already India had lost huge amount of vegetation and forest. There is a big demand for portable water in all over the India. India has very little portable water resources for her future.
It is completely unacceptable to build an observatory at Nilgiri's Biosphere. Currently Tamilnadu faces very hot weather despite summer had already gone. In this condition, even cutting a small plant itself not good for environment.
Indian government is thinking to build this observatory like bringing Mc Donalds and KFC to India. Indians should concentrate about their environment. They should do Science that fits to their needs and their environment. (India has high number of diabetes and heart-related diseases).
The comments from the NBR Alliance have been heard before, and corrected. However, they appear to continue brandishing these numbers in the face of all documents to the contrary.
Just to give an example, according to the INO proposal, the number of heavy vehicle trips will be restricted to 6 round trips per day (max) with NO movement during Nov 15 to Feb 15, when there is a lot of large animal movement in the area. A detailed study on this issue is available on the INO web-site:
http://www.imsc.res.in/~ino/OpenReports/muck.pdf
It will be seen that the numbers quoted above are completely off: transport over 16.6 years as opposed to 53.4 years (468,000 hours assuming 24-hour disturbance per day), with an average of max 6 round trips per day. The same is true for the amount of material to be transported.
It is true that the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board camp of Singara is located in an environmentally sensitive area; however, 13 KILOMETERS of tunnels have been dug here, ending 2005. In fact, the existence of access roads, muck dump-yard, housing colony, etc., at Singara implies that the project can be located here with minimal further disturbance as opposed to a new site where even trees may have to be cleared to achieve these needs, apart from road construction, etc. In fact, not a single tree will be cut at the proposed site.
It is also geologically exceedingly well-studied; tunnel construction has been on-going here for decades. This is critical for the determination of rock quality for the safety of the detector and the people working on it; such data simply does not exist for other possible sites.
Due to concerns that the EIA was inadequate, especially in proposing specific environmental mitigation measures, a detailed environment management plan (EMP) was undertaken two years ago. The EMP report is also available on the INO web-site. (For instance the number and nature of heavy vehicle movement was based on their findings). The interested person may wish to look at the documents, including the draft compliance document, available at
http://www.imsc.res.in/~ino/OpenReports/report.html
The EMP clearly assures that the transport, muck movement and other environmental disturbances can be monitored and controlled so that the disruption of the wildlife and habitat is minimised. These disturbances are confined to the construction period; there will be no disturbance during the operation of the lab.
The FAQ available from the main INO page also sets out many of these details in a non-technical format.
It is unfortunate that despite this, exaggerated claims are being made about the impact of the proposed project.
We agree that any underground lab in mountain terrain is naturally likely to be close to / inside forest land and hence environmental concerns MUST be addressed. The main question is whether this impact can be minimised, mitigated, and whether the proposed mitigation measures will be correctly implemented. The INO group is firmly committed in both respects.
The discussion posting here is really emblematic of the differential treatment given to biologists and physicists. Nature describes the problem as science x wildlife and fails to recognize that the study of animal and plant populations is also a scientific endeavor. With all the problems faced by our society (endangered species, climate, water/food shortages), it is surprising to see that the kind of research that is the most disconnected from our practical needs gets the most funding and is taken more seriously by law makers and even the media.
These are the points I wish to make to Dr. D. Indumathi. In her own words, the EIA was inadequate. Therefore an EMP was produced to mitigate problems.
There are more than 10 endangered mammal species in the area. Where is the team of wildlife biologists that can assert with confidence that the project would not harm these endangered species?
Did the EMP touch upon the legal and policy implications of having the portal situated within the buffer zone of a Tiger Reserve and less than 2 km (and not 7 as claimed by INO) from the reserve boundary. The EMP seems to be silent on an aspect that could have repercussions for the entire protected area network of the country.
The site was chosen by the Survey of India. Where is the report? What was the methodology followed?
It seems that the budget has been tailor-made for Singara. There is apparently no possibility for technological alteration to suit another site (such as lengthening the tunnel or tunelling with a slope). Technical flexibility
implying financial flexibilityhas never been discussed relative to the other sites.If we follow Dr. Indumathi's logic, more projects can be established within the heart of one of India's most important network of protected areas since it has already suffered lots of damage.
Conservation biology, no less than physics, rests on data and rigorous procedures. Given the importance of this area we should minimize risks. Where are the statistics?
1.'All documents to the contrary' have been made available on the IMSc website only in the last week or so. A request for the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) was refused by the INO team in June 2008, and was obtained via the Right to Information (RTI) Act in October 2008. A request for the Environment Management Plan (EMP) was also refused in October 2008, even under the RTI Act, under the pretence of it not being completed. (Documentary evidence of this is available on request)
2.There has been some misinformation about the distance of the INO site from the Core Zone of the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve. We do not know how the figure of 7 kilometres was estimated by the INO team, but the actual number is 900 metres. (Please see http://nbralliance.org/downloads/ino-mtr-dist.pdf for satellite images)
3.All along our calculations regarding debris have been simple and shown clearly on our website. No efforts have been made to counter this simple calculations and estimations by the INO team, other than statements to claim 'no more than 6 trucks a day'. Though the recently released 'muck' document goes to great lengths to show less than 6 round trips per day, it seems to have some basic maths issues.
(a) One INO 'trip' is actually 3 truck round trips, or 6 truck one way trips as per our documentation.
(b) In addition to the one time movement of 'drill jumbos, mobile crane, tipper trucks, jack hammers, rock bolters, excavators/loaders, etc.', there will be 53,000 tons of detector (this figure ignores the 2nd phase detector [INO Report] where another 50,000 tons will be added), 19,500 tons of material, and 199520 cubic meters (558656 tons, since density of charckonite ~ 2.7g/cc) of muck. These figures are not very different from ours except for the 2nd phase detector and the fact that 25480 cubic meters of muck is going to be reused. This amounts to a total of 631156 tons of material or 78895 truck loads (8 tons/truck) to be moved.
(c) Over the mentioned 16.6 year period, the total number of 'INO trips' as per their document is 11442 which amounts to 34326 truck loads. We wonder what they plan to do with the remaining (78895-34326) truck loads, since they state 'The muck will be stored in the TNEB muck yard, for eventual evacuation.'
(d) Our figure of 468,000 hours of disturbance was quite simple. Interviews with truck drivers showed that one round trip from the Bandipur Tiger Reserve border (near Hangala village) to the INO site and back would take 6 hours. 78,000 truckloads meant 468,000 hours these trucks would spend in forests. This has been distorted in a rather complicated manner by the INO team.
(e) Two wrongs do not make a right. The Tamilnadu Electricity Board's Pykara Ultimate Stage Hydro Electric Project with its 13 km of tunnels is a well known ecological disaster. We hope that we as a species will learn from our mistakes, and not continue hurtling down our chosen path of destruction.
5.It is true that the tunnel portal will be within the TNEB campus, but it is also true that the Tamilnadu Forest Department last month paid a significant amount of money to the TNEB by way of damage caused to their property by elephants. The entire area is within an important wildlife corridor, and it is ridiculous to claim elephants will know the difference between man made boundaries of private and forest land. The disturbance over the 8 years of construction to will surely be enough to stop all wildlife movement through this area.
6.Many loose statements in the INO FAQ have been countered in http://www.nbralliance.org/downloads/environmental-concerns-around-ino-site.pdf. In particular, experts have reviewed the EIA document and showed without doubt that it did not in anyway assess the damage that was likely to be caused. The INO team also acknowledges that the ' EIA was inadequate'. We wonder how they have been able to plan mitigation measures and produce an EMP, when the environmental damage was not known in the first place.
7.Though the INO team claims to have conducted a nation wide site search, no reports to document their efforts have been made available. Once the site was selected complete and genuine efforts are being made to minimise the environmental damage, but the this could be the last straw on the camel's back, as the area is already under tremendous pressure. Perhaps even minimised damage is too much. Numerous studies show that the region is vital, and all suggest steps need to be taken to reverse the damage (The Asian Elephant in South India; Sukumar et al, 2008).
8.All their report seem to point to only three sites, the other two in unlikely regions of high seismic activity in the Himalayas. We wonder why the INO scientists have not made public that they have studied (and documented) another site in the Western Ghats that fulfils all the required criteria (http://nbralliance.org/downloads/ino-theni-site.pdf ). We did not of the existence of this report until yesterday.
Coordinator,
NBR Alliance.
Corrections:
charnockite misspelled charckonite.
The Asian Elephant in South India; Sukumar et al, 1998.
Thanks for information.
I would like to suggest that region in Marathwada situated in Maharashtra is best for the experiments and the lab.Please let me know if this feasable keeping intact natural heritage of Nilgiri's.i can't believe it's even up for discussion. i suggest that the government should stay far from the last remnants of wildlife clinging to existence by a thread, and instead disrupt and destroy the habitat of the the most offensive indigenous species, homo sapiens. if they want a neutrino lab, let them take some land currently allocated to useless and idiotic purposes, like temples, golf courses, and cemeteries, to name a few.
This is not fair. Science should stand for nature. A true scientist would think from nature's viewpoint. Whatever the exaggerated outcome may be, it should be axed from its base at the first shot itself if it hurts mother nature.Despite any action that harms the environment should not be even considered. That lab may be futile or not.. A request.. please don't hurt nature..
Me, a Genetics researcher from Cambridge, UK who born and brought up in the tiny village Masinagudi which is 6 km away from Singara site. I have seen the A-Z stages of the Pykara Ultimate Stage Hydro Electric Project (PUSHEP). This project ran more than a decade with the tunnel goes down in the singara range mountains for 13 kms to built a Underground Power House Cavern. To be honest, i have not seen a drastic environmental hazards or impact due to this project on our village's domestic and wildlife environment. Though there are issues such as disturbance to animal movements and forest habitat, but ultimately this project is helping to generate 150 MW of electricity and also provided massive employment oppotunity to the local dwellers and to the people from all over the country.
As a scientist, i foresee the prospects of INO's project at this site. But, as Dr. Indhumathi said, strict environment policies should be established and more importantly ''implemented'' to minimize or mitigate the impact of INO project on the entire Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve, which is under consideration by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee for selection as a World Heritage Site.
This wildlife corridor is home for more than 1200 endemic flora and more than 600 species of vertebrates and innumerable invertebrates and also several endangered species. INO should consider and give much more priorities to the happy living of these species, and, more than that, to the human health safety of local villagers.
Perhaps, INO may also look into the CERN's large hedron particle accelerator lab's environment concern. Although CERN is not directly involed in the environmental matters, it carefully monitors the potential impact of its activities on the surrounding environment.
With the hope and trust on INO that it will address all environmental concerns, personally, I welcome and excited abouth this experimental particle physics project in our village, which would pave the way to better understanding of the particle physics by atmospheric neutrinos. Conservation biology is no less than particle physics, but in the same sense, human society is no less than wildlife community.