The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) will not give environmental clearance to any new projects in West Bengal for eight months as the state needs to prepare a pollution mitigation strategy, following which the industries will have to create their pollution control mechanism.
CPCB chairman SP Gautam, on the sidelines of the North East and East Power Summit, organized by the Indian Chamber of Commerce, said that the board has launched a Comprehensive Environment Pollution Index, whose findings show that West Bengal?s three major industrial regions or clusters, namely Asansol, Haldia and Howrah, are critically polluting.
? We have asked the state to prepare a pollution mitigation strategy, which has to be brought at an implementing stage within eight months from now,? Gautam said. ? Till then all environment clearances for projects will be kept on hold,? he added.
CPCB has surveyed 88 such industrial regions across the country, of which 43 have been found to be critically polluting with Comprehensive Environment Pollution Index above 70.
?There is a moratorium in giving environment clearances to all new projects in these clusters unless a pollution mitigation strategy is worked out,? Gautam said.
He said the country is heading towards Geographic Information System (GIS) and Global Positioning System (GPS)-based pollution control regime with such systems likely to be in place in another 4-5 months.
He said CPCB is making Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) mandatory for all environment clearances and LCA should form a part of all detail project reports (DPRs).
LCA would mean finding out the intensity of pollution created in the entire cycle starting from transporting the raw material to the factory up to pushing the finished product into the market. Even end use of a product may be brought under the LCA.
?We need to move from comprehensive environmental assessment to cumulative environmental assessment,? Gautam said.