Indian LG plant lacked environmental clearance before leak

NEW DELHI (AP) — A plastics factory in India where a chemical gas leak killed 12 people and sickened hundreds more last week lacked federal environmental clearance but had been issued state permits to operate anyway, exposing a potentially dangerous enforcement gap in the country's laws.

The owner of the LG Polymers plant in Andhra Pradesh state, South Korean chemicals giant LG Chem, said in a May 2019 affidavit that formed part of an application for the clearance that the company “doesn’t have a valid environmental clearance substantiating the produced quantity, issued by the competent authority, for continuing operations.”

LG Chem spokesman Choi Sang-kyu told The Associated Press that the company had always followed Indian law and had operated the plant based on the guidance of Indian officials, both at the state and federal level. He said the affidavit was a pledge to comply with the law in the future and not an admission of any violations.

Interviews with officials and legal experts indicate that the plant was likely operating in a legal grey area, with the environmental clearance required under federal regulations but the enforcement of those requirements left up to states. While there has been no indication that the lack of such a clearance played a role in the May 7 disaster, experts say the fact that the plant operated for years without one shows how weak environmental laws can be in a nation with many of the world's most polluted cities.

“There are many such industries operating without an EC," environmental lawyer Mahesh Chandra Mehta said, adding that it showed authorities were “toothless.”

LG Polymers is facing charges following the disaster, which involved styrene gas, a neurotoxin, leaking from a storage tank as workers prepared to restart operations idled during India’s coronavirus...