The Hindu , Monday, November 08, 2004

Correspondent : Staff Reporter

GHAZIABAD: The groundwater in several areas of the city is getting increasingly contaminated with toxic chemicals discharged by industrial units. Yet neither the district administration nor the local pollution control board have invoked the Environment Protection Act against these units. This despite orders from Lucknow. The situation has come to such a pass that pollutants have even leached into the municipal water in some areas. A case in point is Lohia Nagar, where tap water is said to be laced with carcinogenic chromium. To make matters worse, the groundwater table of the area has now sunk to 70-80 feet. Municipal official Manju Gupta revealed: "It is sinking further by about 5-6 feet every year." Besides the older local units, several hundred polluting industries displaced from Delhi have moved to Ghaziabad’s residential areas. These include the highly polluting dyeing and electroplating units, apart from plastic recycling units that cause air pollution. And although the local authorities have identified only 428 polluting units, environmental activists say there are many more - like Sanjay Nagar, Hindon Vihar, Vijay Nagar, Pratap Vihar, Makanpur, Khoda and Shahid Nagar. On August 12, state principal environment secretary Vinod Kumar Malhotra ordered the local PCB officials to invoke the Environment Protection Act against polluting units. This Act provides for up to five years of imprisonment for polluters, which is thought to be an effective deterrent. However, not a single polluting unit has faced action even under the relatively lenient Section 133 of the Criminal Procedure Code which empowers the administration to close down polluting units for being a "public nuisance". About Lohia Nagar, the regional chief of the PCB, R P Chowdhary,said: "The underground tanks of the effluent treatment plants of two local industrial units had leaked some years back. But they have been set right." According to Ghaziabad DM Santosh Yadav, 428 polluting units had been identified in residential areas earlier this year. "The administration had demolished 52 of these units. The drive was halted due to byelection. But after Diwali, not only do we intend to demolish the remaining units, the owners of such factories will also be put behind bars."

SOURCE : Times of India, Monday, November 08, 2004