NGT restores Graphite India closure order

Bengaluru: The 20-year-old battle of Whitefield residents against the Graphite India (GIL) has come to an end. The National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Monday restored the closure order of the Karnataka State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB), which refused consent for running the plant in 2012.“The respondent No 1 (GIL) was grossly non-compliant of the requirement of environmental mitigation measures,” the order, which was uploaded on the NGT’s website on Thursday, stated. The NGT also acknowledged that the particulate matter pollution — emanating from graphite dust — was travelling long distances and settling on homes, fields and water bodies.“We are overwhelmed by the NGT order,” Zibi Jamal of Whitefield Rising said. “It was a long battle for Whitefield residents. We made innumerable visits to the KSPCB office, crowd-sourced money to fight the legal battle, conducted health surveys and also came up with a device to study air-pollution in and around Whitefield,” she said.Graphite India had received clearances to resume operations in its Bengaluru plant from December 2018 after the company paid Rs 50 lakh to the KSPCB under the ‘polluter pays principle’, an order from the Supreme Court. With NGT’s new order, the GIL will have to close the operations.Meanwhile, the NGT also directed constitution of a joint committee comprising representatives of CPCB, KSPCB and the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI), Karnataka to carry out three tasks: That includes undertaking stack monitoring of the industry, studying ambient air monitoring of the industrial unit and the surrounding area by setting up ambient air-monitoring stations in at least ten different locations and undertaking study on source apportionment of pollution sources.“The entire exercise shall be carried out within two months. The KSPCB shall be the nodal agency,” the order reads. The next hearing has been scheduled for April 8, 2019.

from Economic Times http://bit.ly/2GcKc9W