UT to water down air pollution

CHANDIGARH: National Green Tribunal (NGT) orders have forced the UT administration to prepare an action plan against air pollution and form a committee that has proposed to wash all major roads and pavements once a week with tertiary water to settle the atmospheric dust.

The municipal corporation will do this cleaning. The committee has also proposed to install tertiary-water-fed fountains on all major roundabouts, hoping that the ambient mist will settle the hanging particles of dust. Already, Chandigarh has stopped registering vehicles older than 15 years and the now the committee has suggested not even letting these into the city. Its alternative is to promote battery-operated vehicles, increase green cover, and take strict action against the polluting factories and vehicles.

A senior UT official said: “The administration will get approval from the UT adviser before sending the action plan to the NGT and the central pollution control board.” Recently, the UT administration rejected a proposal for a study to quantify the proportion of various polluting elements in the air. The excuse was high cost. The local administration has no data to measure the overall level of air pollution.



Air quality data taken from 5 sites

The Chandigarh pollution control committee has air quality monitoring devices at five locations (Sector-12 Punjab Engineering College, Sector-39 Institute of Microbial Technology (Imtech), Industrial Area, Kaimbwala village, and Sector 17). It covers institutional, industrial, rural, and commercial areas. The environment department has installed another device at the Sector-50 Government College of Commerce and Business but it reads only two pollutants

The city will start real-time monitoring of air quality based on individual readings of eight parameters from these stations. Presently, the UT collects the data manually and sends it to the central pollution control board after 24 hours. The process of installing continuous ambient air quality monitoring station (CAAQMS) has started. Teams will study the working of similar stations in Haryana and Punjab

Air-quality index (AQI) classifies the ambient air as good, satisfactory, moderately polluted, poor, very poor, or severe. The AQI for Chandigarh was above the permissible limit in 2017.

National Green Tribunal (NGT) orders have forced the UT administration to prepare an action plan against air pollution and form a committee that has proposed to wash all major roads and pavements once a week with tertiary water to settle the atmospheric dust. The committee has also proposed to install tertiary-water-fed fountains on all major roundabouts, hoping that the ambient mist will settle the hanging particles of dust.