Environmental Lawyer in Korba

Korba's coalfields and thermal power stations make it one of the main power-producing districts in India, and one of the most polluted. The problems people bring to us from Korba are specific: fly ash tipped along roads and into low land, ash ponds that seep or overflow, a Hasdeo river carrying more than water, dust in the town, and forest cleared for coal. In Chhattisgarh, the regulator is the Chhattisgarh Environment Conservation Board, NGT cases go to the Central Zone Bench at Bhopal, and writs go to the Chhattisgarh High Court at Bilaspur.

This page is only about Korba district: the coalfields, the power stations and their ash ponds, the Hasdeo river and the villages, forests and town around them. It explains who regulates what, why fly ash complaints are the heart of most local cases, how to complain and claim relief, and what plants, mines and ash contractors should do with a board notice.

For matters elsewhere in the state, see our page on environmental law work in Chhattisgarh. The general law on ash from power stations is covered in our guide on thermal power and fly ash pollution.

The essentials

Trucks are dumping fly ash near our village in Korba. Is that legal, and who is responsible?

Usually not, and more than one person can be responsible. Under the fly ash utilisation notification of 31 December 2021, coal and lignite power plants must ensure that the ash they generate, and the legacy ash sitting in their ponds, is put to recognised uses such as cement, bricks, road and embankment construction, and certain kinds of land filling done under prescribed safeguards. Ash tipped by a truck on a roadside, into a nala or onto a farmer's field, with no safeguards and no permission, is not utilisation. It is dumping.

The power plant that generated the ash is the first party responsible, because the notification places the duty on it, and boards can levy environmental compensation for non-compliance. The transporter who dumped it is also liable, and so may be a landowner who took money to let ash be tipped on his land. In practice, a complaint that identifies the plant, by following the trucks or reading the transport challan, moves much faster than one that only describes grey heaps.

Complain in writing to the Chhattisgarh Environment Conservation Board and the Collector, Korba, with photos, truck numbers and the location. If the dumping continues, the matter can go to the NGT Central Zone Bench at Bhopal, which can order removal of the ash, restoration of the land and compensation. Our guide on fly ash dumping rules sets out the duties in more detail.

What makes Korba different from other industrial districts

Korba's economy rests on two things that sit almost on top of each other: large coalfields, including some of the country's biggest opencast mines, and a cluster of coal-based thermal power stations, both public sector and private. Coal goes from mine to plant over short distances, the plants burn it in huge quantities, and the ash that is left over has to go somewhere. Korba has been listed among critically polluted areas in CPCB's CEPI assessments.

The result is a district where air, water and land problems overlap. Dust comes from mines, haul roads, coal trucks and dry ash. Water in the Hasdeo and its tributaries receives runoff from ash ponds, mine areas and industrial outfalls. Land is lost to mines, overburden dumps and ash ponds, and land outside them is affected by dumped ash. The town of Korba sits among all of this, and its residents breathe the result.

Korba also borders some of central India's most important forest areas, including the Hasdeo region, where coal blocks have been strongly contested by local communities. Disputes about forest diversion, therefore, are as much a part of Korba's environmental law as disputes about pollution.

Korba problems and the authority to approach

The laws Korba cases usually turn on

Living next to an ash pond in Korba

Several Korba villages sit close to the embankments of ash ponds. Their complaints fall into three kinds: dry ash blowing off the pond surface in summer, seepage through the embankment into fields and wells, and overflow or breach in heavy rain. Each is a breach of the plant's duty to manage the pond safely, and each leaves different evidence.

Blowing ash is best recorded on video on windy days, with the pond visible. Seepage shows as wet, grey patches at the foot of the embankment and changes in nearby well water, so a water test before and after the monsoon helps. A breach is an accident, and section 17 of the NGT Act makes the operator liable without proof of negligence. In all three cases, ask the board under RTI for the pond's design conditions, its inspection reports and whether the plant has a plan to clear legacy ash as the 2021 notification requires.

Using a plant's environmental clearance as evidence

Every large power station and mine in Korba operates under an environmental clearance that carries detailed conditions: how ash is to be handled, how much green belt must be maintained, how dust is to be controlled, what water may be drawn and discharged. Plants file periodic compliance reports on these conditions. Residents rarely read them, but they are among the most useful documents in a Korba case.

If a clearance says the plant must cover its ash trucks, keep its pond surface wet or maintain a green belt along the village boundary, and the village can show with photographs that it does not, the complaint stops being an opinion and becomes a documented breach. The NGT takes such breaches seriously. Our guide on what to do when EC conditions are not followed explains how to get and use these papers.

Pollution in the Hasdeo and its tributaries

The Hasdeo is Korba's river, and most of the district's water-related complaints come back to it. Ash ponds sit close to its tributaries, and seepage or overflow, especially in the monsoon, carries ash into streams. Mines discharge water pumped out of pits. Industrial and township sewage adds to the load. Downstream villages use the river for bathing, cattle and sometimes drinking.

Proving river pollution needs more than a photograph of grey water. It needs the source: a pipe, a breach in an ash dyke, an overflowing channel, identified on a map and photographed on dated occasions. It needs at least one laboratory test from upstream and downstream of the source, so that the difference is visible. And it needs the board's own data, obtained under RTI, showing what the consent allows and what the board's samples found. With those three, the board and the NGT can act. Our guide on industrial discharge into rivers explains the evidence the tribunal expects.

Coal mining and forest diversion: what can villagers challenge?

Mining coal in forest areas needs central approval under the Van (Sanrakshan Evam Samvardhan) Adhiniyam, 1980, in addition to environmental clearance. Villagers who object to a coal block in forest land can raise their objections in the approval process and at the EIA public hearing. Once the approval under section 2 is granted, it can be appealed to the NGT within 30 days of its communication, with up to 60 more days if there is sufficient cause.

The NGT examines whether the approval was properly granted: whether the relevant facts, including the nature of the forest, its ecological value and the impact on water and wildlife habitat, were considered. In T.N. Godavarman Thirumulpad v Union of India (1996), the Supreme Court held that forest is to be understood in its dictionary sense, whatever the ownership. That principle matters in Korba, where land shown as non-forest in revenue records may still be forest on the ground. Our guide on challenging forest land diversion sets out how such appeals are built.

One honest limit: offences under the Wild Life (Protection) Act and the Indian Forest Act, such as poaching or illegal felling as a criminal matter, are not within the NGT's jurisdiction and go to the criminal courts. An NGT case works best when it is framed around the clearance, the approval or the environmental damage.

How to stop fly ash dumping near your village in Korba

These steps are built around the most common Korba complaint. Each one adds to a record that the board, the Collector and the NGT can act on.

Dust and air quality in Korba town

Air in Korba town and the villages around the mines carries dust from many sources: mine blasting and haul roads, coal and ash trucks, dry ash ponds, and stack emissions from the power stations. The National Ambient Air Quality Standards 2009 set limits for particulate matter: for PM10, 100 µg/m³ over 24 hours and 60 annually; for PM2.5, 60 over 24 hours and 40 annually. Monitoring stations in industrial districts often record levels well above these.

For residents, the most effective complaints are about specific, fixable sources: a road where uncovered trucks run day and night, an ash pond whose surface is dry and blowing, a siding with no water sprinkling. A complaint that the air is bad in general is hard to act on. A complaint about a specific source with video and dates gives the board something to inspect. Our guide on PM10 and PM2.5 air quality standards explains how the numbers are used.

Our plant or contractor received a CECB notice. What should we do?

Notices in Korba typically concern ash utilisation shortfalls, ash found dumped outside authorised sites, dust from ponds, stack emissions, and discharge from ash ponds into streams. Identify the document first. A show-cause notice needs a reply within the stated time. A section 33A or 31A direction is an order with a 30-day appeal to the NGT. A refusal of consent goes first to the state appellate authority under section 28 of the Water Act or section 31 of the Air Act. An environmental compensation demand under the ash notification has its own basis and can be contested on the facts and the calculation.

When Advocate B.K. Singh advises a power station on an ash dumping notice, the question he asks first is whether the plant can trace every load: who carried it, where it went and what it was used for. Plants that can show a documented chain, with contracts, transport records and site verification, are in a much stronger position. Those that handed ash to contractors without tracking it will find it hard to escape responsibility for wherever it ended up.

Contractors and fly ash users should understand that they are not outside the law either. A transporter who tips ash in a nala, or a brick or filling operator who takes ash without following the required safeguards, can face action from the board and claims before the NGT. Our page on appeals against pollution board orders sets out the appeal routes.

Documents to collect for a Korba matter

What we do at each stage for Korba clients

• First assessment. We read the papers and tell you which law, which authority and which time limit apply.
• Evidence. We help villagers organise videos, revenue records and test reports, and draft RTI applications.
• Complaints. We draft complaints to the CECB, the Collector and the SDM, and letters to plants and contractors.
• NGT cases. We file applications, compensation claims and forest diversion appeals before the Central Zone Bench, and deal with joint committee reports.
• For companies. For plants, mines and ash contractors we prepare notice replies, challenges to compensation demands, revocation applications and appeals. Fees are agreed in writing, stage by stage.

Mistakes we see in Korba cases

Villagers often complain about ash only after it has been flattened and covered with soil, by which time the board finds nothing visible. Record it while trucks are still coming. Another mistake is to ignore the land owner's role: if ash is on private land with the owner's consent, the complaint should still go ahead, but the facts should be stated honestly.

Plants often treat ash disposal as the contractor's business. It is not. Under the notification, responsibility stays with the plant. And companies sometimes respond to an NGT notice by denying that the ash is theirs, without records to prove it. That rarely works when the board has already traced the trucks.

Related pages for Chhattisgarh and other power districts

For coal mining, steel and power in the neighbouring district, see our page on Raigarh. For the steel belt, see Durg-Bhilai. For another coal and power district under the same NGT bench, see Singrauli.