SHILLONG, March 18: The state government has gone into damage control mode with Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma directing the Meghalaya State Pollution Control Board (MSPCB) to undertake a comprehensive audit and inspection of all industrial units in Byrnihat, tagged the world’s most polluted urban space.
The MSPCB has to complete the intensive audit within a week and submit a report to the Forest and Environment Department. This was decided in a stock-taking meeting with officials of the department.
Earlier, the Chief Minister alluded to the “negative” global and national reports on Byrnihat during the Budget session of the Assembly and sought coordinated action between Assam and Meghalaya. Byrnihat straddles the two states.
He also sent a DO letter to his Assam counterpart Himanta Biswa Sarma for collaborative action as most of the ‘red category’ polluting industry are in the Assam side of Byrnihat.
It is learnt that the Assam Pollution Control Board has initiated action and steps for audit and inspection of their industrial units. The Meghalaya government is also undertaking measures to monitor and review pollution on their side of Byrnihat.
Assam and Meghalaya have 20 and five industries in the red category, 15 and 22 in the orange category, and four and 14 in the green category respectively.
The MSPCB conducted several surprise inspections at the industrial units in the EPIP and found violations of pollution norms, including heavy emissions from chimneys due to non-operation of pollution control devices, ineffective pollution control devices, and non-transmission of online emission data.
Taking cognisance of the violations, the MSPCB issued closure notices to seven industrial units and imposed environmental compensation on two industrial units.
According to the Meghalaya government, the Continuous Ambient Air Quality Monitoring Station installed at the Central Academy for State Forest Service in the Assam part of Byrnihat continued to show “poor” or “very poor” on most days AQI even after the closure of seven industrial units in the Meghalaya side of Byrnihat from January 29 to March 11.
This indicated that the major sources of air pollution were industrial and other activities on the Assam side of the border.
The MSPCB engaged the Kolkata-based Council of Scientific and Industrial Research-National Environmental Engineering Research Institute to conduct an emission inventory and source apportionment study of Byrnihat. The final report is being prepared.
