Hyderabad: Highly polluting industries in Telangana state continue to pollute without any fear. It has been four years since the Central Pollution Control Board directed all the state pollution control boards to direct companies falling under 17 categories of highly polluting industries to install automatic air pollution monitoring units for continuous monitoring of air quality.
However, till date, only 46 of the 213 such industries have installed the monitoring units in their plants in Telangana. Even though the TS Pollution Control Board has the power to take stringent action, including shutting down a plant in case of violations, it has restricted itself to a regulatory role. As of now, no serious mentionable action has been taken against the 167 industries that have not installed air pollution monitoring units. TSPCB has just been issuing notices and extending deadlines.
A senior TSPCB official said, “Whenever we send notices to a violating unit, their officials claim that they do not have adequate finances to install the air pollution monitoring units. Each monitoring unit costs about Rs 40 lakh and a single industry might need three or four units. Most of the industries claim that their monthly revenue is very limited and they cannot afford to install the air pollution monitoring units.” The deadline for installing the units was set as March 31, which has been pushed to June 31 now.
Regarding water pollution, among the bulk drug manufacturing units, only 42 of more than 200 units have implemented the Zero Liquid Discharge systems in their plants. The TSPCB had also directed the units to install cameras with night-vision technology at the ZLD systems so as to ensure that the system is working efficiently and no liquid is being let out at night. There are several issues within the PCB that restrict its efficiency, like limited spending of allotted funds. It was even pulled up in a recently released CAG report of the erstwhile AP Pollution Control Board.
GPS tracks effluent carriers:
The TS Pollution Control Board on Friday launched a GPS-based system to track vehicles that carry effluents from industries to the effluent treatment plant at Jeedimetla. “As of now, 30 tankers of the Jeedimetla effluent treatment plant have been fitted with trackers. Their movement can be continuously monitored by officials from the TSPCB as well as industries. The system also generates a report,” said N. Raveendhar, a senior social scientist at TSPCB. The system will be extended to about 200 more tankers which carry effluents to the common effluent treatment plant in Patancheru, Mr Raveendhar said.
The Board has also developed a web application on its recently launched website for real time online checking of effluents being transported by the tankers. “When a tanker leaves a unit for the effluent treatment plant, a set of six documents is received by the TSPCB from the companies mentioning the quantity and type of effluents. Every day about 30 such trips are made.
“Most of the times these documents were sent every month. We used to receive hundreds of stacks of papers, making it difficult for us to scrutinise them. With online system, the board can maintain a day to day check,” he said.
Relocation of polluting units remains pipe dream:
Relocation of polluting small industries from the city to the outskirts, in Ranga Reddy and Medak districts, has proven to be a far-fetched dream. One of the most recent failures of the government is the non-fulfilment of its ambitious promise of shifting about 120 electroplating units — which produce about 80,000 litres of acidic water every day — from the city limits to RR district, for which April 30 had been set as the deadline.
Till now, only about 60 electroplating unit owners have come forward and applied for land with the TS Industrial Infrastructure Corporation to shift their units to RR district. It is the same case with textile dyeing, edible oil and steel rerolling units, numbering about 60, which have to be shifted from Hyderabad to Indrakaran, Buchinelly and Rakamcherla respectively.
An area of 163.9 acre in Indrakaran and 314.4 acre in Buchinelly, in Medak district, and 122.8 acre in Rakamcherla, in RR district, were identified for the purpose long back. Both TSIIC and TSPCB have washed off their hands saying they cannot force the industries to shift. The only positive development till now is that the Ramky Group has been identified for building a Common Effluent Treatment Plant at Indrakaran.
