The Ministry of Forest and Environment (MoFE) has come up with a new ambient air quality standard to record the noise pollution at new airports. From now onwards, the noise limits for new airports would be 65 decibel (DB) in day time and 60 DB for night. However, the noise limits for existing busy airports would remain the same.
As per the notification issued on Thursday, the specified limits shall have a tolerance limit of 10 DB. The specified limit excludes aircraft landing and take-off noise while the noise standards within the boundary for various airports would be on line with the Industrial Areas. It includes the day time limit of 75 dbA and night time 70 dBA.
Reacting on the draft notification of the MoFE on noise pollution, environmentalist Gopal Krishna said, “Citizens have the fundamental right to live in places with zero noise pollution…but there should be an assessment of whether the rules prescribed by the Ministry to control noise pollution are being followed or not by the State Governments.”
“Any upcoming and new airport noise modeling shall be conducted by airport operators and results should be discussed during Environment Clearance (EC) with MoEF to ensure the proper land use planning and controlled developments by the Ministry of Urban Development and concerned State Development Authorities with respect to residential, institutions and commercial facilities and other noise sensitive areas in the airport noise zone,” read the notification.
It further stated that the aircrafts shall be communicated by Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) after consultation with Airport Operator through Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) to Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) and Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEF&CC). Reacting to the draft notification, president of an NGO CHETNA, Anil Sood, said it was an “extremely high” level for those living under landing funnel. “In the notification, the noise limits for new airports without dealing with the issue of noise mitigation measures as the noise levels of the aircrafts is extremely high for those staying under landing funnel.”