Bhopal Articles

U.S. BUSINESS NEWS

Bhopal Haunts Dow Chemical Two Decades After the Disaster
Disaster Survivors to Speak At Shareholders Meeting

By JIM CARLTON and THADDEUS HERRICK
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

May 8, 2003Nearly 20 years after an environmental disaster at a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, the tragedy remains a thorn in the side of Dow Chemical Co.

Dow, which acquired Union Carbide in 2001, is expected to come under attack at its annual meeting of shareholders Thursday from a group of survivors of the 1984 incident, in which a pesticide plant leaked toxic gases that killed at least 3,000 people and injured tens of thousands more.

Union Carbide years ago sold its interest in the plant and paid $470 million to the Indian state of which Bhopal is the capital to settle all claims of liability. But survivors and their supporters continue to hound Dow to pay as much as $1 billion more in damages for what they call unmet medical bills and toxic-cleanup needs. The group is seeking to make Dow liable for the Bhopal legacy through a suit filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. The suit, originally filed against Union Carbide in 1999, was dismissed by the court in 2000, reinstated on appeal, and dismissed again in March. Survivors have filed an appeal.

Bhopal is just one of a series of problems for Dow that don't seem to go away. Profits, which fell 28% in the first quarter, are down amid high energy prices and weak demand for commodity chemicals. Indeed, the company's earnings have failed to cover its dividend payment costs for the past 10 quarters.

Dow has other environmental headaches, too. Environmentalists say the company may be responsible for dioxin pollution in groundwater near its headquarters in Midland, Mich., among other places. Dow says the origin of the pollution is unclear, but that it is a high priority for the company to address and resolve.
Bhopal survivors Rashida Bee (left) and Champa Devi (right) with Bhopal activist Satinath Sarangi (center) participate in a protest last week in New York City.


A DISTANT TRAGEDY
1984: Methyl isocyanate gas leaks from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, killing at least 3,000 people.

1989: Union Carbide pays $470 million to Madhya Pradesh state government to settle all liability claims.

1994: Union Carbide sells its interest in the plant.

1999: Bhopal survivors file lawsuit seeking damages against Union Carbide in U.S. court. Suit is thrown out but that decision is appealed.

2001: Dow Chemical acquires Union Carbide.

2003: Delegation from Bhopal travels to U.S. to ratchet up public pressure on Dow. They start a hunger strike on Wall Street last week, and plan to attend Dow's annual meeting Thursday and to confer with the company's chairman.

The Bhopal controversy is beginning to resonate with some investors.

"We believe the continuing protests and media coverage around this issue pose a risk to Dow's reputation and undermine Dow's stated commitments to sustainability," said a Dec. 2 letter to company officials signed by San Francisco-based Trillium Asset Management and eight other self-described "socially responsible" investment firms. Trillium said it doesn't own Dow stock but represents clients who do.

The delegation representing Bhopal survivors has journeyed to the U.S. to ratchet up public pressure on Dow. Two Bhopal survivors, 46-year-old Rashida Bee and 50-year-old Champa Devi, last week launched a hunger strike at the giant bull statue near New York's Wall Street to draw attention to their cause. They and another activist, Satinah Sarangi, plan to speak out at Dow's annual shareholders meeting Thursday. They have also arranged a meeting afterward to discuss the situation with Chairman William Stavropolous. Company officials have said they would consider offering some additional aid for Bhopal, without admitting liability.

"If Dow were a truly responsible company, it would have settled the Bhopal issue the day they acquired Union Carbide," said Ms. Bee, who suffered partial blindness and lost five family members in the Bhopal disaster.

Union Carbide's environmental legacy has begun to appear on Dow's bottom line. Last year the company estimated pending and future liability on asbestos claims against Union Carbide to be $2.2 billion and took a charge of $800 million, with the balance of the estimated obligations to be covered by insurance. Union Carbide made asbestos as far back as the 1960s.

In India, a longstanding criminal case remains unresolved against eight officials of Union Carbide, including Warren Anderson, the company's chairman during the Bhopal disaster. The charges, originally filed as "culpable homicide not amounting to murder," were later downgraded to a "rash and negligent act." The officials have denied the charges but have failed to appear in court. It isn't expected the Indian government will seek their extradition.

John Musser, a Dow spokesman, said the criminal case is against Union Carbide and hasn't affected Dow's business dealings in India. He said any argument that Dow has "unresolved liabilities [related to Bhopal] is only accurate to the extent it relates to criminal charges against Warren Anderson and Union Carbide." Any other claims have been resolved for more than a decade, he added.

Write to Jim Carlton at jim.carlton@wsj.com3 and Thaddeus Herrick at thaddeus.herrick@wsj.com

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Business/Financial Desk

Bhopal Extradition Sought

World Business Briefing Asia: India
By Saritha Rai (NYT)
July 3, 2003, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Nearly two decades after the toxic gas leak at the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal in central India, India has asked the United States government to extradite Warren M. Anderson, then chairman of the company. A warrant has been pending against Mr. Anderson since April 1992 in a criminal case in which he is charged with culpable homicide, the equivalent of manslaughter. More than 3,000 people were killed when a deadly gas was released from a storage tank at the plant on Dec. 3, 1984. Thousands more died later from the aftereffects. The case was pressed by organizations representing survivors. Mr. Anderson resigned as chairman 15 years ago.

http://www.nytimes.com

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Business News

Shareholders will chart Dow's course

Sunday, April 11, 2004
Paul Wyche
The Saginaw News

MIDLAND -- As Dow Chemical Co. prepares for its annual meeting, the business faces corporate layoffs, increasingly vocal investors and a potential class-action lawsuit.

Stockholders will gather at 2 p.m. Thursday, May 13, at the Midland Center for the Arts.
In the meantime, Dow continues to defend itself against allegations it created health risks and ruined property values of residents living along the Tittabawassee River.

A class-action suit could include more than 2,000 residents who claim that Dow polluted the river with dioxin.
Saginaw County Chief Circuit Judge Leopold P. Borrello will decide Wednesday, June 9, whether a suit that now includes 170 residents gains class-action status.

On the financial front, Dow is coming off a record year. In January, it posted its biggest fourth-quarter profit in at least a decade as it raised prices and experienced the fruits of a tax gain.

Total sales increased by 18 percent in 2003 to $32.6 billion -- the most ever.

Dow managed to overcome a 33 percent boost in feedstock and energy costs last year by volume management and cost reduction efforts, including worker layoffs.

In February, the chemical manufacturer announced it would cut an undisclosed number of corporate management-level jobs throughout its global operation during the first half of this year.

Company executives are mum about the number of eventual layoffs, saying only the cuts are "from the top down, and it's going on all over the globe."

Shareholders not afraid to publicly voice displeasure at company moves pose another dilemma.
Dow ousted former boss Michael Parker in 2002 and came under fire from some shareholders who felt they rewarded him with a fat retirement package.

This year, at least three investors are calling for a corporate report on the Bhopal, India, chemical leak, a proposal the company is asking shareholders to reject.

It maintains the tragedy that killed some 4,000 people occurred at Union Carbide Corp. in 1984, long before Dow bought the company in 2001.

Dow will ask stockholders to approve an annual Board of Directors election rather than electing directors to three-year staggered terms.

The change further indicates how Dow is attempting to reorganize its internal structure. The company went to a new administrative lineup last year that includes Andrew N. Liveris as president and chief operating officer and William S. Stavropoulos as chief executive office.

Dow also formed a new executive team to staff the newly created Office of the CEO. Modifications to Dow's structure are just part of the "evolutionary process," officials say. Saginaw Township broker Steven Anderson agrees, but said corporate scandals also play a part. "The Enrons, Adelphias and Tycos of the world are making shareholders want to hold their boards more accountable," said Anderson, vice president and branch manager for the Hilliard Lyons office at 4835 Towne Center. He manages more than 100,000 shares of Dow stock.

"Part of the problem with the old boards is (potential) for cronyism, and there aren't a lot of checks and balances," he said.

"Twenty years ago, shareholders just took for granted that the people running the company knew what they were doing, but that has changed, and you have shareholders who are more knowledgeable now."

Paul Wyche covers business for The Saginaw News. You may reach him at 776-9674.
© 2004 Saginaw News. http://www.mlive.com/business/sanews/index.ssf?/base/business-0/1081678971156670.xml

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Union Carbide toxic waste poisons groundwater

Bhopal, Apr 17 (IANS) :

About 8,000 tonnes of toxic waste is still lying scattered and exposed in the Union Carbide factory premises here, nearly two decades after a gas leak instantly killed 1,750 people and thousands of others over the years.

And 20 years after the deadly methyl isocyanate gas leaked out of the pesticide manufacturing plant in this Madhya Pradesh capital on the night of December 2/3, 1984, tens of thousands of people living near the abandoned factory continue to suffer because of the toxic waste.

Scientific studies, by both government organisations and NGOs have proved that the toxic waste, which contains harmful metals like mercury and life-threatening pesticides and pollutants, has seeped into the underground water reserves over the years.

"We believe that around 40,000 people of localities in the close vicinity of the plant have been drinking the contaminated water for the last several years," said Abdul Jabbar, a crusader for the gas victims.
The areas include Ayub Nagar, Kainchi Chhola, Arif Nagar, Dashhehra Maidan, Chandbari and Garib Nagar in the city.

"The water is not colourless and it tastes bitter. We know it is harmful for our health but we have no other option. Also, due to financial constraints, I cannot move to some other place," said Rashid Khan, a resident of Arif Nagar.

Khan's father and brother died in the tragedy. He himself is suffering from respiratory disorder.
Khan is one of the many thousands of victims of the world's worst industrial disaster, which continues to take a heavy toll after so many years.

"The gas affected over 500,000 people and an estimated 30,000 people have died over the years," said Jabbar, who has tirelessly fought for the rights of the victims for 20 years.

Every day, about 4,500 patients queue up at government-run outpatient departments complaining of respiratory diseases, stomach ailments, dysentery and nervous system disorders. Activists' claims have been backed by several studies over the years that said residents of the area have been drinking highly contaminated water injurious to human health.

A study conducted by the public health engineering department in 1998 stated: "Large areas of Bhopal city consisting of 10 wards were badly affected by the disastrous methyl isocyanate gas leakage. This gas has badly polluted the environmental status of not only the locality but also underground water reserves."

In 1999 a study made by Greenpeace, an international environmental organisation, said: "The water had been contaminated thousand times more than the average drinking water standards acceptable in developed countries."

According to a study conducted by the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI), Nagpur, the factory area recorded a high concentration of toxic wastes, indicating the possibility of contamination at very deep depths. A study by the Boston Citizen Environmental Laboratory in 1998 claimed the water had been contaminated to a dangerous level.

But former chief minister of Madhya Pradesh Digvijay Singh, who ruled the state from 1993 to 2003, always denied that the underground water was contaminated.

In fact, Singh was even in favour of dissolving the gas relief and rehabilitation ministry and had said on Dec 1, 2000, that it had outlived its utility as the survivors were not suffering any more. Then, to prove that the water was not contaminated, Arif Aqueel, then in charge of gas relief and rehabilitation, went to areas near the plant and drank directly from taps.

There was some recognition of the victims' plight recently when, in a judgement last month, an appellate court in the US held the Union Carbide responsible for contamination of the groundwater. The court also declared that those affected by drinking the contaminated water should get compensation.

Jabbar had hailed the judgement and said it was a resounding slap on the face of the governments, both central and state, which have all along denied reports of chemical contamination.

Soon after the judgement, Babulal Gaur, gas tragedy relief and rehabilitation minister in the current Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), had said water would be supplied in tankers to areas where the underground water was contaminated till an alternate arrangement was made.

However, till date not a single tanker of water has been sent to any affected area. Unlike his predecessor, Gaur does not deny the water is contaminated. But he wants fresh studies to prove it.

The fresh studies may or not happen, but one thing is certain -- first it was the gas leak and its aftermath and now it is the contaminated water whose debilitating effects will be seen for years to come.

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Front Page

Bhopal survivors among 7 to win Goldman Prize

Jane Kay
APRIL 19, 2004,

Twenty years ago, Rashida Bee awoke in the middle of the night to the coughing, gasping and crying of the children in her house. Outside, people were shouting, "Run for your life. The gas has leaked."

"It felt as if our lungs were on fire and someone was poking needles in our eyes," recalls Bee. In the streets, she could see children lying dead, people vomiting blood.

The horror had just begun for Bhopal, India, in the world's worst industrial accident. The explosion at the Union Carbide plant on Dec. 2, 1984, released clouds of poisonous methyl isocyanate gas and other toxic chemicals that would eventually kill 20,000 people.

Nearly 20 years ago, halfway around the world from Bhopal in Norco, La., a town of 5,000, Margie Richard awoke to a chemical leak from the Shell Chemical Co. plant that killed seven workers. Richard lived 25 feet from the fence line.

Bee, 48, and Richard, 62, share a common response to these environmental disasters. They overcame ill health, poverty, racism (Richard is African American) and religious barriers for women (Bee is a Muslim) to organize thousands against some of the largest corporations in the world -- Union Carbide and its owner since 1999, Dow Chemical Co., and Shell and its parent company, Royal Dutch Shell.

They are among activists from around the world, including Bee's Bhopal colleague, Champa Devi Shukla, 52, to be named "environmental heroes" and receive the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize today in San Francisco.

Other winners are:
-- Rudolf N. Amenga-Etego, 40, from Accra, Ghana, a public-interest lawyer successful in suspending a major water privatization project backed by the World Bank.
-- Libia R. Grueso Castelblanco, 43, from Buenaventura, Colombia, a social worker who secured more than 5.9 million acres in territorial rights for black rural communities.
-- Manana Kochladze, 32, of Tbilisi, Georgia, who won crucial concessions to protect villagers and a pristine mountain gorge from a consortium led by British Petroleum, including Unocal, which is building an oil pipeline in the former Soviet Union.
-- Demetrio De Carvalho, 37, a founder and an environmental hero of the new nation East Timor.
The Goldman Environmental Prize, one of the most coveted environmental awards in the world, was founded in 1990 by businessman Richard Goldman and his late wife, Rhoda Haas Goldman, a descendant of Levi Strauss.

Winners, representing each of six continents, are selected by an international jury, and receive prizes of $125,000, which they can use in any way.

Bee and Shukla will share the prize money and the high-profile honor, which they hope will draw attention to their continuing fight with Dow to win medical treatment and other aid. Thousands of Bhopal residents, the two women included, continue to suffer debilitating medical problems, among them breathlessness, pain in bones and joints, acute headaches and reproductive and neurological damage.

In May, a network of supporters, which grew out of an unusual women's labor union founded by Bee and Shukla two years after the explosion, plans to attend Dow's stockholders' meeting. The activists want to hold Dow accountable for the accident at the plant, which it now owns.

The women also are part of a class-action suit asking for a cleanup of toxic waste on the ground and in water as well as seeking money to cover medical monitoring and costs.

Dow has said it is not responsible for Union Carbide's liability and advises the people to go to the Indian government for redress. The activists are also at odds with the Indian government about the extent of the contamination and the health effects.

Richard, a former teacher, faced her first horrendous accident in 1973 after a Shell pipeline burst. On the street, she found a 16-year-old boy under a sheet, still alive, covered with raw burns and bubbling blisters. She was a leader in establishing a small neighborhood group in the 1980s. Now, with the help of Greenpeace, the Sierra Club and Earthjustice, it has grown to an international network, including the West County Toxics Coalition in Richmond.

Her group took compelling health statistics as far away as Royal Dutch Shell in the Netherlands, showing higher-than-expected rates of cancer, birth defects and other diseases within the area, a part of what is known as Louisiana's "cancer alley."

In 2002, Shell agreed to buy out and pay to move the predominantly African American, four-square-block Old Diamond neighborhood, which is squeezed between a chemical plant and an oil refinery. Shell also agreed to reduce its emissions at the Norco plant by a third, according to Richard.

Richard was inspired to become a teacher by Mary McLeod Bethune, adviser to four U.S. presidents on African American affairs for whom her elementary school was named. Active in her Christian church like her parents, Richard said she would reread the story of David and Goliath for strength. She could talk to political leaders and corporate chiefs, she said, by remembering the words, "If you don't tell them, how will they know?"

E-mail Jane Kay at jkay@sfchronicle.com.

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