NEW DELHI: The Central Pollution Control Board has reportedly started the process to rank 88 industrial clusters across the country for their pollution levels. The CPCB recently completed the analysis of the levels based on air and water quality and hazardous waste generated by these clusters.
Once the industrial clusters are ranked for the pollution levels, the Union government will draw a comprehensive action plan to bring down the pollution levels in these areas.
Way back in 2009-10, the state pollution boards along with the CPCB had conducted surveys to check pollution levels in the 88-odd notified industrial clusters.
Later, the CPCB had ranked these clusters under critical and serious categories.
As many as 88 industrial clusters in 16 states having Comprehensive Environmental Pollution Index of 70 and above were identified as critically polluted areas.
These clusters inducled Sonbadhr Singrauli and Ghaziabad in UP, Kobra in MP, Angultalchuer in Odisha, Bhadrabhati in Karnataka, Chandrapur and Chambur in Maharashtra, Dhanbad in Jharkhand, Durgapur in West Bengal and Pali in Rajasthan. As many as 32 industrial clusters with CEPI score between 60 and 70 were categorised as seriously polluted areas.
After the ranking, the state pollution boards had formulated their action plans. Experts say that despite the action plans, there was hardly any improvement in the pollution levels in these clusters as a result of which the Union environment ministry had imposed a ban on opening new units and on expansion of existing industries in these areas. On the assurance of various state governments, the ban was later lifted.
In 2016, CEPI was subsequently revised by the CPCB to make the concept of CEPI simple so as to facilitate the citizens to evaluate the CEPI score. Since the old CEPI had some factors which were difficult to monitor like potentially affected pollution and assessment of health impact, the revised CEPI laid significant weight of 50 per cent of the observed quality of ambient environment in order to have a constant monitoring data of the ambient air quality .
On April 26, 2016, the CPCB issued directions under Section 18(1)(b) of the Water (Preventive and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974 and Air (Preventive and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981 to undertake environmental quality monitoring.
