Srinagar: Advisor to Governor K Vijay Kumar today stressed on the officials of the State Pollution Control Board to be more active, responsive and interactive while performing their duties of enactment of various laws of Environment protection.
He said this while reviewing the functioning and the performance of State Pollution Control Board (SPCB). The meeting was attended by Commissioner Secretary Forests, Saurabh Bhagat, Chairman State Pollution Control Board, B Siddhartha Kumar, Secretary SPCB, BM Sharma, Regional Director SPCB and other senior officers of the Board.
On the occasion the meeting was informed that Board has switched over to on-line Consent Management and Monitoring System to ensure transparency and speedy disposal of consent cases for setting up new industrial units. Officials informed that the move has further eased the process for young entrepreneurs to set up new industrial units and that about 2300 consents have been issued since June last year.
Meeting was further informed that to keep track of harmful emissions emitted by various industrial units, the SPCB has installed Online Continuous Emission Monitoring System (OCEMS) in 53 highly polluting industries under 17 different categories all over the state.
Regarding monitoring of Water Pollution, meeting was informed that SPCB monitors water quality under National Water Quality Monitoring Programme (NWMP) at 74 monitoring stations by the CPCB covering stations on rivers. lakes, ponds and Ground Water Wells while the Board also monitors 21 STPs across the state including 13 in Kashmir and 8 in Jammu.
Officials further informed the advisor that on the directions of High Court, the Board monitors the vehicular pollution with the assistance of Traffic Police and has mobile labs are in service for the purpose. They said the Board randomly cross checks 2023 vehicles upto March 2018 while the Board also monitors the Pollution Checking Centres and reports are conveyed to the Transport Commissioner for further action.
With regard to the implementation of ban on plastic, officials informed that SPCB seizes 314.74 quintals of polythene during the current fiscal and fetched Rs 36.78 lakhs as revenue from auction of the seized material. They said in an innovative disposal the Board, last year, handed over 396.9 quintals of seized polythene to SFRI for raising seedlings.