Commission Is Set Up For Air Quality Management In Delhi

The air quality in Delhi NCR has attracted the term “Very Poor” just yesterday, i.e. on Friday Nov 06^th, according to Air Quality Index (AQI) while the category it falls in is “Very Severe”. Such destruction in our breathing is attributed to some factors prominent to city dwellers, such as farm fires in neighbouring states, fall in temperature and falling wind speed.

The data shared by System of Air Quality And Weather Forecasting (SAFAR) indicates that there are 3225 places where farms still are in flames in bordering states and which in fact contributes to over 21% of air pollution in our city. Mr. Kuldeep Srivastava, eminent scientist at Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) maintains,” The pollutants have accumulated in the last two days due to unfavourable meteorological factors, their dispersion is taking place at slow rate”.

Clearly, as the wind speed on Friday was around 8-10 km per hour, with the north-westerly direction, pollutants arising out of stubble fires easily crossed into our city through air.

Commission On Air Quality Management:

Being driven to the wall, by surging pollution in air, the Centre has declared constituting a commission to bring air pollution under control which has instantly gone functional just yesterday and is chaired by Mr. M M Kutty who is ex Delhi Chief Secretary and is assisted by a bevy of seasoned professionals, to name a few, such as:

• Prof Mukesh Khare from IIT Delhi,
• K J Ramesh, ex DG Indian Meteorological Department,
• A K Nautiyal, Joint Secretary in Environment Ministry,
• Ajay Mathur, DG TERI,
• Ashish Dhawan, Air Pollution Action Group,

Possible Tech Options To Be Considered:

Hon’ble Union Environment Minister, Mr. Prakash Javedkar has also being mournful on this burning issue and has favoured the use of technology in dispersing the pollution mass from city atmosphere in days to come. In his words, “The central government has been working constantly on all fronts towards mitigation of air pollution. The government is working towards abatement of air pollution by working at the source level, be it the industries or the thermal power stations, vehicular pollution, construction and demolition waste or stubble burning, which are major sources of pollution generation”.

Checking Pollution At Watery Fronts:

For a long time now, on certain cheery occasions such as Durga Pooja etc, idols are immersed in water bodies sucha s rivers, lakes, ponds etc, which causes deeper water pollution, in myriad forms such as bio-chemical oxygen, concentration of heavy metals and water also becomes low conductive and so forth. As such, taking stock of the situation, Hon’ble Green Tribunal has issued strict orders to prohibit tossing any type of pooja contents into river Yamuna, but there is specified a site for such a purpose. In the similar spirit, even idol makers are reined in with the following directives:

1. Natural material to be used for making idols and even conventional clay is allowed but baked clay, plaster of paris etc is to be surrendered now,
2. Idols should not be applied paints upon but even if paints are necessary then only water soluble and non-toxic paints should be used.

Waste Management Effort To BE Boosted With A Plant:

In yet another step to check the pollution growth and to deter deactivate the root cause of various diseases, a plant is planned to be planted to turn garbage into power.

The heap of garbage at Gazipur Poultry Market in Delhi, which has always angered the residents living by and has seethed the environmentalists for many years, their concerns seem to have been pacified now, as our Delhi Government mulls over installing a plant to turn the heap of waste into energy and the garbage will be subjected t recycling.

Currently, there are 3 WTE plants fully operational across Delhi, which are at locations Okhla, Gazipur and Bawana and it is said that half of the waste collected daily (10,050 tonnes) is treated in such plants. But CSE (Centre for Science and Environment) claims that the plant is capacious of dissolving only 10% of the waste.

Going by the average, it is held that 10% of the overall waste that Delhi produces daily, is retrieved for recycling by informal sector while 65% of it, can be treated with biological or thermal technologies and remaining 25% is like a hard nut to crack and still calls for new ways of treatment.

 

Salient developments, converge towards making a greener Delhi are:

• Ban on fire crackers in Delhi till Nov 30^th,
• Supreme Court asks central government to speed up efforts to bring pollution down,
• Government issues advisories to Delhi residents to remain at home and to even close windows and doors,
• Corona virus situation in Delhi aggravates by pollution,
• Construction sites are visited by pollution control squad and impose heavy fines if anti-pollution directives are found to be violated,
• Indian Agricultural Research Institute has developed a solution which can be sprayed onto crops’ residue and the matter can be turned into manure instantly. If the experiment is satisfactory, then our neighbouring states will be better equipped disposing stubble.
• A Green Delhi App is under development with which anyone can click a picture of any location, vehicle or event producing pollution,

Well friends, whatever comes out, let’s keep fingers crossed, else there isn’t any other way ahead.

 

 

 

 

Tags: air pollution in Delhi, Air Quality Management Commission in Delhi, fire crackers ban in Delhi, Gazipur Murga Mandi, Heap Garbage at Gazipur Murga Mandi, Stubble burning, Waste Into Energy plant