Hindustan Times: Mumbai: Saturday, December 23, 2017.
These
factories, located in Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC)
area, were asked to shut down after investigations by the MPCB revealed that
they had violated the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974,
and the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981.
P Anbalagan,
member secretary, MPCB, said, “We asked these factories to shut down as a last
resort, after they repeatedly failed to comply with environmental laws. We were
forced to take this action on the basis of the severity of the violations.” He
also added that there are over 90,000 factories in the state, which meant that
less than 1% of the factories were found to violate pollution control laws.
The 834
factories, mostly chemical or pharmaceutical units, included 49 in Pune, 380 in
Ulhasnagar, 170 in Ambernath and Dombivli, 81 in Tarapur, 23 in Chiplun, seven
in Taloja, and 8 in Patalganga, Roha and Mahad each.
On October 4,
HT had reported that according to the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB),
Maharashtra has the maximum number of polluted river stretches in the country -
49 of 315. In another report, HT reported that around 3,000 million litres of
untreated sewage and industrial effluents are discharged into the state’s
rivers, lakes, and other water bodies.
According to
a report by the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC),
while Maharashtra generates 13% of the country’s sewage, about 8,143 million
litres a day (MLD), it has facilities to treat only 5,160.36 million litres of
sewage per day.
Godfrey
Pimenta, trustee, Watchdog Foundation, said, “The water pollution problem faced
by the state can be attributed to the fact that the enforcement of the
anti-pollution law was lax. The figures in the reports show that the
prosecution of a few factories was mere tokenism”
“However, it
is not just an enforcement issue, but is also owing to the fact that industries
are more focused on profit-making than the well-being of the environment,” he
added.
“Units in the
state that failed to install or effectively use individual effluent treatment
plants (ETP) and common effluent treatment plants (CETP), or directly
discharged effluents in water bodies without following environmental norms, are
the ones that have been taken to task,” said Anbalagan.
He added that
some of the closure directions were issued as a result of orders passed by the
Supreme Court and National Green Tribunal. “If, while drawing samples from
these plants, the levels exceed the safe standards by 70%, our policy mandates
shutting down these industries without any hearing.”
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