In its fight against the looming winter smog over the NCR, the Haryana government has decided to follow the Beijing model. The state is in talks with a Holland-based company to set up smogfree towers in Gurugram and Faridabad, the two districts adjoining the national Capital that contribute to nearly one-fifth of air pollution in the region.
A smog-free tower is a sevenmetre-high air purifier, the largest in the world, which takes in polluted air particles and expels cleaner air. Beijing, often dubbed as the Asia's smog-chimney, installed several such units in October last year to handle the worsening air condition in the city.
"Haryana surrounds most of the National Capital from south, west and north side and it becomes our responsibility to share the burden of NCR's fight against deadly air pollution," Vipul Goel, state industry and environment minister told MAIL TODAY. "We are aggressively looking at a tech-enabled pollution free environs in Delhi's backyard in Faridabad and Gurugram to start with."
Goel said he came to know about the smog-free towers installed in Beijing and its positive feedback in China through media articles. The minister got in touch with the Dutch designer DaanRoosegaarde who was behind the clean-air project in an industrial park of Chinese capital.
Instant results
He will be soon visiting Beijing with a team of experts and officials to see on ground. Each air purifier tower, which contains three small in-built purifiers and the outer shell, is effective within the radius of 300 metre to 7 km, claims its manufacturer company.
One unit of the giant purifier costs somewhere between `1.8 and `2 crore and it takes about three months to manufacture a single unit. Once on ground, it shows instant results, according to the company.
Goel said that he is keen to push for installing the air purifiers in the two districts before the onset of winters. Haryana will also simultaneously employ conventional mode in its fight against pollution and plant about 2.5 crore saplings in the current year. "We planted about 2.3 lakh trees in just three hours in a similar drive recently,'' he said.
However, officials associated with the move, said the final details of the purchase were not yet out. "We have not decided on the numbers yet, but at least 10-15 in Manesar-Gurugram area alone would be required to bring down smog levels there… and at least three to five in Faridabad at critical junctions would be adequate to start this tech-enabled fight against pollution in NCR," a state government official, requesting anonymity, said.
Joint action
Such a move by Haryana would be a welcome move for Delhi, currently battling worsening air-pollution levels in a decade and between November and January each year, triggering severe respiratory ailments for children and aged.
The National Green Tribunal too has raised concerns about the perennial smog blanket every winter all over the NCR and advised the states to thrash out a joint action plan to minimize Delhi's air pollution levels. Experts say that the standing air purifier sucks in 75% of the particles in the nearby air that are dangerous to humans, and then spits out clean air into the surrounding space.
It has already made a difference to Beijing air, claims local Chinese media. The units are movable and can be reinstalled to a different site.
The Haryana government is also mulling a viable solution to end crop burning by local farmers. Crop burning in fields of Haryana and Punjab contribute significantly to rising Delhi's air pollution levels.
But with local politics involved, an immediate step is unlikely soon, hinted officials adding, "but we are putting up 19 ambient air quality monitors to assess the peak pollution time causing the rise in Delhi's air pollution levels".
