Central Pollution Control Board's proposal to re-categorise industries draws flak

CHENNAI: With the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) making addendum to the ‘Draft report on classification of sectors into red, orange, green and white categories’ to incentivise industries and re-categorise them, activists opine that the relaxation will ignore the cumulative impact of industrial pollution.

In a representation to Tanmay Kumar, chairman-CPCB, T Arulselvam, coordinator of Sipcot Area Community Environmental Monitoring (SACEM), said that the proposal was about moving an industry, not the sector, from red category to orange to green.

“Such a process of re-categorisation can complicate the problem, and lead to more corruption. On the other hand, with the sector remaining ‘red’, an industry of a particular ‘red’ category sector being moved to ‘green’ is likely to be challenging for regulation,” he said. “The proposal of re-categorisation takes away the punishment based on the pollution caused by the industry. The state pollution control boards (SPCBs) that may re-categorise the ‘red’ industry into ‘orange’ will never bring back the particular industry to ‘red’ category in case of violation.”

Meanwhile, a CPCB notification on the addendum said that the incentive of re-categorisation would be given based on pollution index (PI). “The PI of the units in any sector, which have proven reduction in trade effluent generation and/or air pollution management and/or waste management measures, can be calculated based on submission of the same with supporting documents for considering the modified score based on the same methodology,” the notification added.

As per the notification, PI can be achieved by 100% treatment and reuse of wastewater, complete dependency on cleaner fuel alternative, implementation and achievements of targets of sector-specific charters of pollution control boards for environmental management, and use of cleaner process and cleaner technology to eliminate generation of toxic and hazardous pollutants.

Terming the PI as subjective, Arulselvam warned that the industries, which may have achieved recategorisation by bringing pollution-control equipment, changing fuels, and other measures, could always stop using them or switch their fuels. “SPCBs are likely to recategorise merely on the basis of a promise, from the industry, not because they have witnessed the practice. Also, this proposal ignores the cumulative impact of industrial pollution. Even if a particular industry has ‘reduced’ its water intake, locating hundreds of water guzzling ‘red’ category industries can be detrimental to the local environment and ecology,” he added. “The CPCB must increase people’s participation in categorisation, inspection frequency and citing criteria.”