Delhi often remains in headlines for the degraded air quality and level of contamination in the city. Garbage burning significantly contributes to polluting the air quality. Another major problem looming over the city is the number of exhausted landfills, which hardly suffices the daily production of 10,000 metric tonnes of municipal solid waste. In a fresh development, some images caught by the NASA satellites have exposed the worsening condition of pollution in Delhi along with cases of serious law noncompliance.
“Nasa satellites have picked up several red dots within Delhi, in areas such as Narela, Najafgarh and Bawana. Red dots have also appeared in Gurugram. These, however, can’t be incidents of stubble burning as agriculture is not practised in these areas. These dots mostly likely indicate burning of plastic and garbage in the open in industrial areas,” reported Bhure Lal, chairman, EPCA.
It has come after NASA has disclosed several satellite images that indicated red spots over the national capital, indicating the continual waste burning. This has backlashed the decision of Environmental Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority to heavily crack down on garbage burning in Delhi. It made it an offence and issued a fine of Rs 5,000 for polluting air last year.
The Supreme Court-empowered EPCA had warned in a statement last year that the civic officials can penalize people with a fineRs 5,000 if they are caught burning garbage. The decision had come after the meeting of EPCA members to strictly implement the Graded Response Action Plan until March 2018. This was to ensure the quality of already poor and severe air pollution in Delhi and NCR.
This action was set to counter the air pollution but unfortunately, the situation is worsening day by day.
“A satellite won’t be able to detect small fires such as a burning matchstick or a chulla (oven) inside a house. The fire has to be big, generate a huge amount of heat and should continue for a few hours for satellites to detect it,” a senior official of the DPCC has reported.
The air quality of Delhi has declined since the retreat of monsoon on October 1. It has been registered as ‘poor’ for consecutive days. The AQI value for Delhi was 209 on Saturday. Meanwhile, farmers in Punjab and Haryana are gearing up to burn the stubble which will further deteriorate the air quality.
