Following instructions of the Supreme Court empowered Environment Pollution Control Authority (EPCA) to curb pollution in city’s 13 hotspot areas, Delhi Government along with civic agencies have taken a stern action on fuel adulteration. According to senior officials in Delhi Government, ‘Fuel adulteration is serious threat to the local environment’.
A team has been constituted comprising members of Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC), Transport department along with Traffic Police. The team collected 213 samples from the private vehicles such as Light Good Vehicles (LGVs) and Heavy Good Vehicles (HGVs).
‘These samples have been sent to Fuel Testing Laboratory (FTL), Noida, a unit of Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas,’ said a senior official of Environment department.
Delhi Government along with Department of food and Civil Supplies has lifted 150 samples of petrol and 150 samples of diesel from the retail outlets of petroleum products and sent it to the lab.
Revenue department and Transport department inspected 869 KOD out of 1,463 Kerosene storages and 1,807 vehicles for violating plying without PUC Certificates have been challaned while 558 have been impounded.
A Delhi Government official said in compliance with the orders of the Supreme Court, all agencies have intensified their actions on ground , mainly 13 areas where pollution levels always remain higher.
These 13 areas are Okhla Phase-2, Narela, Bawana, Mundka, Punjabi Bagh, Dwarka, Wazirpur, Rohini, Anand Vihar, RK Puram, Jahangirpuri, Vivek Vihar and Ashok Vihar. Six more have been identified in NCR- Faridabad Phase-1 and 2, Udyog Vihar, Bahadurgarh, Bhiwadi and Sahibabad.
Besides, fuel adulteration, DPCC has imposed Environmental Compensation (EC) of Rs 13 lakh on 16 visibly polluting vehicles till November 21.
‘These vehicles have been impounded and are in custody of the Transport Department,’ the official added.
Focusing hotspots, 351 polluting industries have been closed. ‘In addition, 319 industrial units which were using fuels other than Piped Natural Gas (PNG) have been closed down to curb emission of pollutants.
‘We are ensuring that direction of monitoring committee related to closure of non -PNG industries are being complied with, hence 1,165 industrial units which were earlier running on fuels other than PNG have converted to PNG while gas supply to these industries has been accomplished in association with Indraprastha Gas Limited (IGL),” officer said.
Meanwhile, despite the efforts, Delhi is still facing tough time as overall Air Quality Index (AQI) 339 touching higher end of Severe category. SAFAR in its air quality forecast said that an increase in surface and boundary layer wind speeds are forecasted form Friday afternoon for the next two days.
“The condition is forecast to improve significantly by tomorrow to the lower end of the very poor category, further improvement to the poor category is expected by November 24,” said SAFAR . “The high wind speed is likely to flush out accumulated pollutants over the Delhi region. The fire counts as per SAFAR multi-satellite product estimate is 141, significant reduction from the last two days counts are partly due to satellite
inability to detect fire during cloudy conditions. The
stubble transport-level winds are westerly and not very favorable for plume intrusion, no significant stubble impact is expecting for the next two days,” it said further.
