Pollution control gets costly

Hyderabad: Even as the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) has made it mandatory for polluting industries (17 categories) to install equipment for real-time online monitoring of emissions and effluents, the industries are raising concerns as it is a costly affair.

The real-time monitoring by CPCB, introduced earlier this year, was to prevent human intervention in monitoring pollution, which had failed in controlling and imposing environmental rules.

The State Pollution Control Board, however, cannot enforce the norm as the industries are expressing helplessness since the installation would cost them more than the capital investment of the industries.

“The SPCB has been asked to issue directions to all 17 categories of highly polluting industries to not only install online effluent quality monitoring software and hardware but to also upload emission and effluent monitoring data in a time-bound manner so that the new system can be launched latest by March 31, 2015,” said Vishwanath, chief environmental engineer (industries), State Pollution Control Board.

However, officials admit that not many industries have abided by the rule. “Most of the cement factories (which have capital investments of not less than Rs 500 crore) have installed the continuous online stack monitoring system to check emission.

However, many of the bulk drug and other industries of less than Rs 1 crore capital have expressed helplessness as the equipment and installations would cost them anywhere between Rs 15-30 lakh,” said an official with AP PCB.

A safety expert with a large petrochemical company said the sensors would cost about Rs 15 lakh, while the accompanying equipment and installation charges would amount to Rs 35 lakh.

Continuous online stack monitoring system, ambient monitoring station and water monitoring system are used to check effluents and emission levels.

“These systems needs to be linked directly to the state PCB and central PCB online sites,” said an official.

However, environmentalists are in favour of the system. “Most of the bulk drug units and other polluting industries in and around Hyderabad and other parts of AP, produce drugs over 30 times than what they are allowed to.

In such a situation, installing such real-time monitoring sensors would bring out the picture,” said Jasveen Jairath of Save Our Urban Lakes (SOUL).

Another environmentalist added, “The system would end the existing inspection mechanism which has been abused by industries in collusion with inspectors.”

Under the new system, the industries are also required to install “continuous effluent and emission monitoring devices” at the discharge outlets.