TRIVANDRUM, 18 December 2003 — Kerala High Court yesterday directed India’s largest Coca Cola bottling plant in Kerala’s Palghat district, accused of depleting water tables, to stop drawing groundwater and find an alternative within a month.
The court directed the local Perumatty village council, which has already served a closure notice on the US soft drink giant, and the state government to ensure that the plant does not extract groundwater after the restricted period.
The village council can renew the plant’s license if it stops extracting groundwater and finds other sources to meet its requirements, the court ruled.
Delivering the judgment, Justice K. Balakrishnan Nair asked the ground water department to inspect the plant site after giving notice to the village council and the company.
Nair directed the village council to ensure all wells of the company are closed with immediate effect.
Coca-Cola claims to have invested over Rs 800 million in Kerala and provided nearly 5,000 jobs. However, use of groundwater by the company has allegedly dried up nearby farmlands occupied by more than 2,000 people. The Perumatty council controls a cluster of villages, including the village of Plachimada where the Coca-Cola plant was set up in 1998.
The court’s ruling came in response to a petition submitted last month by the Atlanta-based Coca-Cola, which has fought a yearlong court battle saying it was not depleting groundwater and should not be closed. The village council says the plant was drawing about 400,000 gallons of water every day through dozens of bore wells.
Activists, farmers and villagers have staged protests outside the plant after a BBC-assigned study found that the plant was depleting water tables and polluting the environment with toxic waste. Environmental group Greenpeace also said its laboratory tests had revealed high levels of heavy metal content in the sludge produced by the company and distributed among farmers as manure and that it could cause cancer.
According to the BBC Radio’s Face the Facts expose in July, the sludge thrown up by the plant found to be containing heavy concentration of cadmium and lead, after the samples of the contaminants taken here were analyzed by Exeter University.
