Pollution board snaps power to dyeing units releasing chemicals into Hindon in Noida

NOIDA: Sixteen illegal dyeing units, releasing untreated chemical effluents into the Hindon in Noida's Bahlolpur, will be sealed on Thursday, said officials with the Noida Authority.
Power connections to the units, meanwhile, were snapped on Wednesday during a crackdown on the polluters by a joint team of UP Pollution Control Board and the electricity department.
Mostly engaged in dyeing shirts, the units were operating without licence and pollution clearance certificates, officials said.
On Wednesday, TOI reported Hindon's waters had turned red, bleached by copious streams of chemicals released by such illegal units that continued to sprout along the river despite several government and judicial interventions to clean it up.
Noida manager Shripal Bhati said the authority's team visited the village on Wednesday evening and identified the units. "All the units will be sealed by early Thursday morning."
The state pollution control board will identify more such polluters in the area over the next few days, regional officer Praveen Kumar said.
"Our teams will ascertain if there are more units that are operating illegally and polluting the river. These units were set up in the residential area in violation of land use norms," the UPPCB said.
Facing shutdown, the dyeing unit owners claimed they had not been issued any notice beforehand. "We don't know what to do now. We are not only facing heavy losses but also do not know how to feed our families. If they had issued us a notice, we could have made alternate arrangements for sustenance," a unit owner said.
Villagers, meanwhile, said the action was timely and much needed.
"We hope that the crackdown will serve as a lesson to other such units destroying the river," said Vijendra Kumar, a villager.
This is not the first time the river turned red in Bahlolpur. "The river sometimes bleeds yellow and turns black as soot, depending on the discharge that is routed to it through the drainage pipelines of the village. But it's good to see such prompt action. We want the authorities to revive the river. For that, they need to keep a check on such units so that they don't resume this work again," Sonu Yadav, a local resident, said.
District magistrate Manish Kumar Verma, meanwhile, encouraged local residents to report any such violation.
"We are very serious about the issue of industrial pollution. There is full compliance by industrial units and we hardly find such violations. Strict action will be taken whenever such complaints are received," the DM said.