Less than 1% of annual budget earmarked for Environment and climate change dept

At present, the civic body implements air pollution mitigation measures through its 28-point guidelines across Mumbai’s construction sites. These include deploying misting and fogging machines and sprinklers. Over the past few months, the BMC has come down heavily on developers to install air quality monitoring stations with municipal commissioner Bhushan Gagrani on Wednesday stating that nearly 90 percent of developers have deployed the machines within worksites.

Announcing the budget Wednesday, the civic body said that in a bid to curb pollution, the department will be implementing localised interventions such as electric sweepers, mechanical power sweepers as well as misting machines at the ward level. Gagrani said AQI is determined by an array of factors. “Air pollution is a result of multiple factors which includes meteorological factors, vehicular emissions which can be controlled on an individual level and construction activity in the city which is being strictly monitored by the BMC,” said Gagrani.

The BMC said it is working towards change on ground to meet the city’s climate goals with focus on three core areas of environment protection, knowledge and information as well as environment and climate change.