Good News Around The World: New Bamboo Plantations Are Healing Villages Choked by Toxic Ash from Coal Plants in India...

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In Western India, bamboo is being used to rejuvenate lands choked with ash from thermal power plants.

One of the largest coal-burning nations owing to its large population and drive for economic development, India has nevertheless likely contaminated thousands of acres of marginal and arable land with “fly ash.”

Fly ash is the heavy particulate matter ejected during coal and wood burning, and in the case of coal, the presence of heavier minerals like silica make farming under its influence all but impossible.

In the Indian state of Maharashtra, Dr. Lal Singh from the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (CSIR) has spent 12 years pioneering a 5-step program to restoring fly ash-degraded lands using bamboo and soil amendments.

Working in the Vidarbha region, three thermal power plants had significantly polluted the surrounding lands. In villages like Ubagi and Khapari, 24 acres of small-holder farms were covered covered in ash, strangling the livelihoods of any who would otherwise farm there.

“The fly ash has a component called ‘silica’ which usually settles on the crops,” Dr. Singh tells The Better India in an exclusive interview. “This cut down the productivity of the crops. Bamboo is a plant that attracts silica, and this helps in making sure crops are not affected as the bamboo sites attract most of the silica in the air.”

There are over one-thousand species of bamboo, and one that could help one village may not be suitable for another. Dr. Singh has worked long and hard, step by step, tree by tree, to develop a replicable approach.



The first is to identify the active contaminant: silica in many cases, but not all. The next is a screening of the potential plants tolerant of the contaminant. Then the excess ash is removed, the soil is amended and inoculated with fungal and microbial strains, before eventually the bamboo is planted.

Up until now, Dr. Singh’s work has primarily taken place in Maharashtra. He’s currently expanding his method to sites in UP and Odisha.

“After Odisha, our team will work on lands in Uttar Pradesh’s Anpara, which is under the fly ash threat and is affecting a water reservoir. We plan to develop a green belt around Anpara to protect the reservoir and prevent water pollution,” Dr. Singh said.