No end to capital's plight, but biweekly plan not ready yet due to 'missing data'

NEW DELHI: Pollution is at the emergency level. Schools have been shut, construction activities halted and industrial units asked to stop operation. At such a time, the biweekly plan — pollution projections for a fortnight that can assist civic agencies to consider pre-emptive measures — for November 16-30 is yet to be prepared, thanks to “missing data”.

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According to researchers at IIT Delhi, the collaborating institution, crucial data for garbage burning and emissions is unavailable and so the biweekly plan for the second fortnight of November remains to be prepared. “We have written to the Central Pollution Control Board but are yet to receive any information,” disclosed Harsha Kota, assistant professor, civil engineering department, IIT-D. “Even if we receive the data today, it will take at least a week to prepare the plan.”

The biweekly action plan is developed every 15 days to help city agencies plan in advance for what is expected in the coming fortnight. IIT Delhi scientists prepare the projections and send them to CPCB, which shares the information with different agencies.

“The idea is to use the information collected by our teams on violations in the region and integrate it into the existing format. This is value addition, but will take seven days more,” a CPCB official said.

The biweekly plan for November 1-15 had pointed out that if dust from unpaved roads was fully checked in the seven critical sites in Delhi and NCR, around 17% reduction in particulate matter pollution could be expected. The seven areas identified were Mayapuri, Wazirpur and Okhla in Delhi, Udyog Vihar in Gurgaon, Sahibabad in Ghaziabad and two localities in Faridabad.

In the plan for October 15-31, the Diwali fortnight, the civic agencies were asked to take preventive measures against industrial pollution, heavy commercial vehicles emission and road dust. It estimated that with an overall reduction of about 20% in the emissions, pollution levels could be reduced by up to 15.8%.

The project has been funded by money collected as environment protection charge from heavy duty diesel vehicles. While the scientists had initially planned to restrict the project to Delhi, CPCB had urged them to cover the NCR towns too. The methodology used to ascertain the different sources of pollution is also being shared with other states because it not only ascertains the sources of pollution, but also recommends focused pre-emptive actions for early initiation, especially in pollution-critical areas.