New Delhi, June 22: The Rs 300 crore pledged by the group of ministers to clean up the area around the Bhopal gas disaster site is arbitrary and ignores the scale of the contamination, activists and non-government organisations have said.

They, however, are reluctant to say how much money would be needed to clean up the contamination, saying only further studies can establish that.

The group of ministers had yesterday submitted a report to the Prime Minister, recommending a Rs 1,300-crore package of compensation for victims of the gas disaster and Rs 300 crore for the site clean-up, among other initiatives.

Toxic wastes released by the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal from the 1970s up to the night of the gas leak on December 2, 1984, have accumulated up to 3km from the factory, activists campaigning for the rights of Bhopal gas victims have said.

Studies by non-government environmental groups have revealed the presence of trichlorobenzene, hexachlorobenzene, mercury, napthalene and other potentially toxic chemicals on factory grounds, in stockpiles, or at disposal sites, they said.

Several thousand people live in the 3km zone around the factory and are exposed to the contaminants through water and soil. A non-government survey in 2002 had shown contaminants in soil, water and breast milk.

“This contamination has been known for years,” said Satinath Sarangi, a metallurgical engineer from Banaras Hindu University and a member of the Bhopal Group for Information and Action, a non-government agency. “Our environmental regulators have blindly trusted the polluters and our scientific agencies have protected the polluters,” Sarangi said.

The National Environmental Engineering Research Institute, a government centre, had stated in the mid-1990s the contaminants had not spread beyond the plant’s premises and would take 23 years to reach the groundwater.

But internal documents of the Union Carbide in the US suggest that the company was aware of the contamination, said Sarangi, who obtained the papers through a class action suit filed by Bhopal survivors in a New York court.

The company’s own study of landfill areas and effluent treatment pits had revealed organic contamination varying from 10 per cent to 100 per cent. “All samples caused 100 per cent mortality to fish in toxicity assessment studies,” one document said.

Sarangi estimates that thousands of tonnes of contaminated waste would need to be transported for treatment and decontamination. “It’s also been estimated that the clean-up would require pumping water and treating it for 20 years,” he said.

“The Rs 300 crore proposed by the GoM is inadequate.”

An affidavit filed in the New York court by Tota Ram Chouhan, a former Union Carbide plant operator in Bhopal, states that from December 1969 to December 1984, chemicals and by-products had been dumped “in and around the factory”.

The Union Carbide management had dumped hundreds of tonnes of various chemicals in and around the Bhopal factory, according to the affidavit. It lists several chemicals including 500 tonnes of ortho-dichlorobenzene, 300 tonnes of chloroform, 100 tonnes of methylene chloride, 50 tonnes of naphthalene and five tonnes of methyl isocyanate.

The gas leak had killed 8,000 people in the first three days and at least another 15,000 through its long-term effects, rights groups say.