PUNE: A day after TOI reported that as many as 72 high-pollution industries in the Pune region were issued closure notices by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), the board's state arm MPCB said that most of the listed units had responded.
The industries, mostly sugar units, distilleries, dye, pharmaceutical and iron & steel factories, had not complied with previous orders to install online continuous monitoring systems (CMS) on their premises.
An MPCB official said that 42 industries in the Pune region (Pune, Solapur and Satara districts) responded to the notice by Wednesday. "While most of these have complied with the order, three are yet to submit the data citing that installation of CMS is currently in process. Thirteen others have stated that CMS had been installed at the unit but was not connected to the MPCB or CPCB server," the official stated.
Asked about the remaining 30 units out of 72, the official said that these 42 units were the only ones that were pending response out of the total. CPCB had, in 2014 and 2015, ordered all units under Category 17 of highly-polluting industries across the country to install CMS and submit their respective data from the system on the CPCB server. The CMS enables CPCB and its state arms to monitor the quality of effluents let out by the unit in real time. However, at least 295 such industries had been found to be in violation of the orders as of September 30, 2016, of which 72 were in Pune region alone. Of these, majority of the units were from the sugar industry.
Owing to this, the CPCB had issued closure direction for all these units on October 13. The CPCB had also asked its respective state arms to ensure power and water supply to these units was cut. The board's recent drastic steps have resulted in the industries complying with the earlier orders.
