The government has issued closure notices to 150 industries on the Ganga river that had not adhered to the new pollution standards and not installed real-time effluent discharge monitoring systems as mandated by the Central Pollution Control Board. Among those asked to shut operations are 68 tanneries in Kanpur, nine sugar units, six slaughter houses, 28 textile units and six paper and pulp industries. These 150 units were among the 764 industries that were identified as the major culprits of industrial pollution in the Ganga river. These industries were asked last year to adhere to new standards, connect themselves to common effluent treatment plants, bring down their water usage, and install real-time effluent discharge monitoring system that could be tracked from a central control room. Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar Wednesday said barring these 150 units all the others had adopted the new standards or were in the process of doing so. He said the steps being taken by the units had started showing remarkable results. He said industrial pollution in Ganga had come down by about a third. The total wastewater generation from these industries had been reduced by 125 million litres per day, while the biochemical oxygen demand, a key indicator of organic pollutants in rivers, was likely to come down by 30 tonnes after the closure of the 150 units. Javadekar said the closed industrial units can be allowed to resume operations if they take all the actions required of them.
