LLM Group 6 Environment and Legal Order Prevention and Control of Pollution 2019 Question Paper with Solutions

For full marks, cover: a good answer defines pollution at four levels, ecological, international, statutory and judicial, and shows what each adds. The kinds should then be discussed by the nature of the polluting agent, chemical, biological, physical and energy, with the persistent pollutants singled out. The impact on the environment is best explained through the processes by which pollution does its damage, bioaccumulation, oxygen depletion, acid deposition, smog and contamination of soil and aquifers, each tied to a decided case. End with the uncertainty of science, which is where law and ecology meet.

Pollution defined at four levels

Ecologically, pollution is an undesirable change in the physical, chemical or biological characteristics of air, water or land that harms living organisms or the processes on which they depend. The ecologist's emphasis is on the system: a pollutant matters because it disturbs a cycle, a food chain or a habitat, not merely because it is dirty.

Statutorily, Indian law adopts the same structure. Section 2(e) of the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974 defines pollution to include the alteration of the physical, chemical or biological properties of water, and the discharge of any sewage, trade effluent or other substance, which may or is likely to render the water harmful to public health, to legitimate uses or to the life and health of animals, plants or aquatic organisms. Section 2(b) and (c) of the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 define an environmental pollutant as any substance present in such concentration as may be, or tend to be, injurious to environment, and pollution as its presence.

Judicially, the Supreme Court has defined pollution by what it violates. In Virender Gaur v. State of Haryana, (1995) 2 SCC 577, decided on 24 November 1994, land in Thanesar surrendered to a municipality to be kept as open space had been leased out for construction. The Court held the leases without authority of law and said that the right to life with human dignity encompasses the preservation of the environment and of ecological balance free from pollution of air and water, so that environmental pollution should be regarded as a violation of Article 21. Pollution in constitutional terms is therefore an infringement of a fundamental right.

Biological pollution. Pathogenic bacteria, viruses and parasites, carried mainly by untreated sewage, and the organic matter whose decomposition strips water of oxygen. Its principal source in India is municipal. The Central Pollution Control Board estimated in March 2021 that 52,133 of the 72,368 million litres of urban sewage generated each day were let out untreated.

Physical pollution. Suspended solids and sediment, particulate matter in air, plastic debris and fibres. Physical pollutants act mechanically as well as chemically: sediment smothers a river bed, and particulates lodge in the lung.

Energy pollution. Heat, noise, radiation and light. None of them is a substance in the ordinary sense, which is why the definitions had to be widened to reach them. The Air Act includes noise within an air pollutant in section 2(a), the Law of the Sea Convention speaks of "substances or energy", and radioactive substances are controlled under sections 16 and 17 of the Atomic Energy Act, 1962.

Impact through oxygen depletion and eutrophication

Organic waste and sewage are decomposed by bacteria that consume the oxygen dissolved in water. When the demand exceeds what the stream can replenish, fish die and the river turns anaerobic and foul. Nitrogen and phosphorus from sewage and fertiliser add a second process: they feed algal blooms that cover lakes, die, decompose and consume still more oxygen. M.C. Mehta v. Union of India, (1988) 1 SCC 471, AIR 1988 SC 1115, decided on 12 January 1988, recorded that 274.50 million litres of sewage a day were discharged into the Ganga from Kanpur alone. The Court held the Kanpur Nagar Mahapalika principally responsible and directed it to submit sewage treatment proposals to the State Board within six months, to shift or clean up the dairies housing some 80,000 cattle, and to stop the practice of throwing corpses and half-burnt corpses into the river.

Coastal soil suffers by salinisation. In S. Jagannath v. Union of India, (1997) 2 SCC 87, decided on 11 December 1996, expert reports showed that intensive shrimp farming along the coasts of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh salinated drinking water and agricultural soil and destroyed mangroves. The Court held such ponds prohibited in the Coastal Regulation Zone, ordered those operating there demolished, and directed an authority under section 3(3) of the 1986 Act to apply the precautionary and polluter pays principles.

Impact through hazardous waste

Hazardous chemicals may enter the environment through trade rather than manufacture. In Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resources Policy v. Union of India, (2005) 10 SCC 510, decided on 5 January 2005, 133 containers of oil lying at Nhava Sheva port had been imported as lubricating oil and were found on testing to be hazardous waste oil. The Court directed that they be destroyed by incineration under the supervision of its Monitoring Committee at the importers' cost, holding both the precautionary principle and the polluter pays principle to be part of Indian environmental law.

Conclusion. Pollution is defined ecologically as harmful change in the characteristics of air, water or land, internationally as the introduction of substances or energy beyond the environment's capacity to absorb them, statutorily as the presence of a substance at an injurious concentration, and judicially as a violation of Article 21. By the nature of the agent it is chemical, biological, physical or energy pollution, with the persistent pollutants the most dangerous. Its impact on the environment works through identifiable processes, bioaccumulation, oxygen depletion, acid deposition, smog and the contamination of soil and aquifers, each of which Indian courts have found as fact at Kanpur, Agra, Bichhri, the southern coast and Nhava Sheva. Because those processes are uncertain in degree, Nayudu places the burden of proving safety on the polluter, and that allocation is the law's most important response to them.