Now, a system to forecast pollution

To make Delhi an environment-friendly city like London or New York, the city will get country's first noise polluting monitoring system and air polluting forecasting system before Commonwealth Games in October reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Jan 17, 2010, 23:40:29 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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To make Delhi an environment-friendly city like London or New York, the city will get country's first noise polluting monitoring system and air polluting forecasting system before Commonwealth Games in October.

“Both the systems synchronized into each other will be in place by September,” said Rajnish Dubey, Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Environment and Forest (MOEF).

For the Games, starting in October 2010, it would mean that the government would be able to regulate pollution levels, both air and noise, around the stadiums.

Delhi's average air pollution is almost 70 per cent higher and average noise pollution 25 per cent more than the national pollution standards.

A new automated pollution measurement equipment is being imported from France to help the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) in forecasting air pollution levels in Delhi for a week.

The two will help the local bodies to plan measures in advance to check the pollution levels.

“Using the data, authorities could regulate traffic in an area, which is a potential source for both air and noise pollution,” Dubey said. “It can work well in reducing polluting levels in areas around the stadiums for the Commonwealth Games.”

Delhi will be among six other cities -- Kolkatta, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Lucknow -- to get noise pollution monitoring centers -- 10 each for a city -- by September 2010.

The ministry has decided that the noise-monitoring network will be extended to 18 cities in 2011 and to 25 cities by 2012. In the next five years, all state capital cities will be covered, Dubey said.

Environment and Forest minister Jairam Ramesh said setting up a systematic national noise-monitoring network would help policy makers in making Indian cities less noisy.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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