New Delhi: The Delhi government on Thursday decided to keep the Badarpur thermal power plant shut till January 31 as part of its anti-air pollution measures.
The government, through the Delhi Pollution Control Committee, also prohibited the lifting of fly ash, the plant’s polluting by product, and directed that water is sprinkled regularly in the fly ash storage area to prevent it from becoming another air pollutant.
Delhi’s air may no longer be a visible, thick curtain of toxic smog, but its dispersion does not mean the city breathes easy. From November 12 till Wednesday, November 17, the city’s air quality index (AQI) has been ‘very poor’, marginally better from previous AQI of ‘severe’, according to the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB).
The decision to keep the Badarpur plant shut is welcome one in the slew of the emergency measures the Delhi government announced, after having to defend itself in front of angry benches at the Supreme Court and the National Green Tribunal for the past few weeks. Both bodies had asked the Delhi government, repeatedly, what it was doing to counter the skyrocketing levels of air pollution.
News18 had previously reported that the five units of the 35 year old Badarpur plant and its 600 acre fly ash pond produce expensive electricity for Delhi, which, being a power surplus city, doesn’t need it.
Apart from the plant, the Delhi government has also continued the ban on diesel generators, banned firecrackers except for religious occasions, burning of leaves and garbage - one of the largest sources of pollution within the city according to environmentalists - implemented dust control measures such as vacuum cleaning and water sprinkling of roads, and closure of polluting industries.
The implementation of these measures were reviewed by the government’s environment minister Imran Hussain, along with the DPCC, on Thursday, and it seems a chastised Delhi government has scrambled to get its act together on punitive measures, after having missed the bus on preventive.
According to government figures, 11 inspection teams have issued 289 challans, imposed fines worth Rs 89 lakh so far across 496 inspection sites while checking the ban on construction and demolition activities and burning of leaves and garbage in the open.
The Lieutenant Governor too, on Thursday, appealed to households with security guards to provide their staff with electric heaters, to cut down on leaf and waste burning. The LG also directed the police to impound diesel vehicles older than 15 years.
Firecrackers, however, continue to rumble every night, courtesy the ongoing marriage season. Though the ban on them has been enacted under the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981, the implementation is lacking.
For industries, the DPCC also told the government that it had issued closure directions to 23 polluting units, in the last 15-20 days, to 23 polluting units in conforming areas and 146 closure directions to polluting industries in non-conforming areas.
Though the promised mist fountains at major intersections are yet to be rolled out, the government started washing roads and footpaths, deploying 54 water tankers on November 9,
Though tenders for 15 mechanised were invited on to start vacuum cleaning the roads, the government has not yet found bidders, according to media reports. The machines that the PWD already had, procured during the Commonwealth Games, were not suited to vacuuming the roads.
For now, with wind giving Delhi a modicum of relief, it can at least be thankful that it has slipped from the most polluted city in the world to the 11th, in WHO’s index.
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