Monday's cloudburst caused the mountain of four to five million tonnes of gypsum waste, including particles of heavy metals and radioactive substances, to slip and slide, and finally, force down a dividing wall to ooze into residential localities surrounding the Gujarat State Fertilisers and Chemicals site.

On Thursday, when this correspondent visited Saurashtra Society and adjoining localities, the residents had just managed clear the slush from their houses and the roads outside. The thick muck had come down from a level of two feet on Monday to half-a-foot.

And on Thursday afternoon, the GSFC authorities had just begun their first meeting with the Bajwa Gram Panchayat. ``Ourfirst priority is to clear the muck. And since people are demanding drinking water and food packets, we'll consider giving those as well,'' GSFC's additional general manager M J Vaidya and deputy general manager A P Pandya told The Indian Express after meeting town representatives.

Backed by Nilesh Patel and K K Shah of the Vadodara Pradushan Nivaran Samiti, and Rohit Prajapati of the Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti, residents of Bajwa said the barely nine-inch-thick dividing wall was only 200 meters away from the waste mountain. It was only recently that the GSFC authorities covered it up with plastic sheets.

The ineffectuality of the covers was borne out by Vaidya's admission that waste along with rain water had gushed into the residential localities last year as well. ``But as a long-term measure, we are planning to install a proper drainage system for the water and plant trees to check the flow of gypsum into Bajwa,'' he added.

Interestingly, trees have been planted at the site but they aim todivide the GSFC unit from the massive heap of waste, a fact noted in a Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB) report on the July 1997 incident.

Asked about health hazards, Vaidya said the waste was harmless, and was not growing, since one of the plants had been shut down. That, however, was cold consolation for Gautam Parmar, resident of Saurashtra Society, as he stood in foot-deep slush, or Amratsinh Rathod, who returned from a trip to Vadodara to discover slush and muck had entered his shop.

``We cleaned our houses. The authorities said they would take care of the streets,'' said Maniben Parmar.

The slush could have contained cadmium, chromium, copper, lead, manganese, calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, silica, sulphate, total phosphate, fluoride, and radioactive substances, according to a report by the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute.

The GSFC and senior GPCB engineers admitted that the waste was hazardous but only because of the massive quantity. Patel and Prajapati,however, alleged that the heavy metal content made it hazardous.

According to Patel, Shah, and Prajapati, many wells in 18 villages surrounding GSFC had become unusable because of the waste leaching into the ground. This triggered a Gujarat High Court order demanding the fertiliser giant supply Bajwa 3,50,000 gallons of water every day. To prevent leaching, GSFC should have overlaid the dump site with an impervious sheet, they said.

To Vaidya's claim that the ``harmless'' heap had not spoilt wells, Shah said, ``Almost every second household in Bajwa and the surrounding villages has kidney-stone cases that can be attributed to the poor water quality.'' The region reported a variety of health problems ranging from dermatitis to infertility.

Vaidya said the responsibility could not be laid at GSFC's doors. He pointed out there were several chemical and petrochemical factories around Bajwa. Asked about the water it ferried to the town daily, he said, ``That's because we care (and want to do something) forthe sorry state of the town.''

The problem is an old one. Two long battles have been fought in Gujarat High Court. But a letter dated October 6, 1997, from the National Productivity Council to the GSFC, which is still sounding out ways to tackle the problem, shows the lack of initiative in its resolution.

The council, which was asked to suggest measures in September, 1997, said about 4 million metric tonnes of waste was spread over an area of 140,000 square metres. ``Because of its quantity and heavy alkalinity, the waste falls under hazardous wastes category and has to be managed in an environmentally safe manner,'' it added.

The NPC suggested, ``By providing proper cover system, the generation of air-borne particles can be prevented. Providing proper storm water collection and surrounding the entire storage area may eliminate contamination due to surface run-off.'' Pity the words went unheeded.