Coal plant ash coats Bangladesh farms as monitoring fails

Riaz Panchayet now runs a tea stall near the Payra Power Plant in Bangladesh's Patuakhali district. He says ash from the plant blackens his shirt and has ruined his papaya, cucumber, okra, and banana farm, leaving his remaining land waterlogged by the facility's drainage. Across the Kalapara subdistrict, residents tell similar stories of health issues and damaged crops linked to the plant. A recent study blames the plant's operator for failing to follow environmental guidelines, noting toxic outputs like carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, lead, and fly ash have heavily damaged the local atmosphere.

Operating without proper air tests

Bangladesh law requires industries to have annual ambient air and stack emissions tests for pollutants like sulfur dioxide and particulate matter. A review of documents from 2021 to 2025 shows the Department of Environment's Barishal office never conducted a stack emission test for the Payra plant. Ambient air quality tests for sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides happened only once, in 2021. That year's test recorded particulate matter at 310 micrograms per cubic meter, exceeding the 200 μg/m³ standard. A second test in half-rainy weather recorded 188.12 μg/m³. Md Golam Kibria, a senior chemist at the Barishal office, said the lab lacks the capacity to perform the mandatory tests. However, Mohammad Abdul Motalib, a deputy director for air quality at the DoE, said the department monitors plants online and engages third-party testers when reports seem inaccurate. Motalib said the DoE did not conduct tests for Payra but observed the air was within standards. He cited a 2022 rule placing emissions reporting responsibility on the operator. The Barishal office director, Muhammad Mujahidul Islam, disagreed, saying ambient air tests are needed because of other activities like coal transportation.

Chimneys built shorter than required

The plant's environmental approval in 2015 came with 57 conditions. Condition 56 mandated a 275-meter chimney before operations could begin. When the DoE inspected on March 2, 2020, to issue an Environmental Clearance Certificate, it found both units' chimneys were only 220 meters tall. The plant's first unit had already begun trial runs in January 2020, and both units were operating commercially before the certificate was issued in October 2020. The plant operator later submitted a revised environmental impact assessment recording the 220-meter height. An expert committee was formed to review the change. Tanvir Ahmed, a professor at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology and a committee member, said the 275-meter height was not mandatory. DoE director Masud Iqbal Md Shameem defended the revision, saying modern policy restricts using excessive stack heights as a substitute for filtration. The decision was based on the expert committee meeting.

Exempted from ambient air testing

On May 27, 2025, an urgent and confidential order from the DoE's then-additional director general exempted several industry categories, including power plants, from submitting ambient air quality monitoring results. The order stated the decision was taken because the Air Pollution (Control) Rules, 2022, prescribe fugitive emission standards for only five other sectors. Bangladesh also applies two different emission limits based on a plant's age. The Payra plant, built before 2020, faces these limits:

Abdus Salam, a chemistry professor at the University of Dhaka, criticized the exemption. He said the exemption from ambient air tests is a blunder.