Smog tower at Connaught Place ineffective, DPCC suggests shut down

The pollution control body wrote to the Environment Department last week, the second time, offering its assessment of the two-year-long project and said that the reduction in particulate matter was only around 12% to 13% at a distance of 100 metres from the smog tower.

The tower in Connaught Place became functional in October 2021. It was built under the supervision of IIT-Bombay, costing Rs 22 crore, and was funded by DPCC. Tata Projects Limited and the National Buildings Construction Corporation Limited (NBCC) were also part of the project.

The study on the effectiveness was carried out by IIT-Bombay. Its report said that the smog tower’s capacity to reduce the concentration of PM 2.5 and PM 10 was 12% and 13% above a distance of 100 metres.

It also said that since the effectiveness was around 16% both at distances of 300 m and 500 m, it indicated a tendency of the clean air jet to persist at longer distances.

The institute proposed that the smog tower be maintained as a national facility to be used for conducting experiments and testing future technologies.

DPCC, however, stated that the impact of the tower was very limited when looking at macro air quality. “The report analysis says that the tower will work more efficiently during the peak pollution loading compared to less pollution loading. The data reveals that the particulate pollution remains very high and not much impact is seen… From the final report of smog tower submitted by IIT-Bombay, it is evident that the impact of smog tower even in the vicinity is very low,” it said.

Speaking about the second smog tower at Anand Vihar, the DPCC said that it could not have a positive impact either.

“Delhi’s air quality is also dependent on meteorological factors… Even slight wind speed and turbulence in weather sweep off the pollutants and AQI improves. Therefore, the percentage reduction envisaged in the report may not be the contribution of the smog tower,” it added.