How green is your building? Coming soon, new rules

What’s more important, each such building will require a ‘‘primary treatment plant’’ in its premises to take care of the waste generated.

The landmark notification, forming part of the Government’s submission to the

Supreme Court today, applies to any building that is going to be used either by 1,000 people or costs at least Rs 50 crore.

Therefore, it applies to not only schools, medium-size hospitals, public places like railway stations and airports but also large housing colonies or apartment blocks with about 200 flats.

The notification is expected to be gazetted soon and will then come into effect after a 60-day period for receiving objections.

Builders will have to hire independent assessors to calculate how much waste their projects will generate — solid or liquid and how to dispense with it.

When the builders go to get their plan approved, they will need the sanction of a Central authority on the strategy to deal with the waste.

So far, this concept was only true for polluting industries.

Sources said a need was felt to introduce it in the residential sector because of the ‘‘indiscriminate clearance’’ being granted to shopping malls and apartment blocks without taking into account the resources available and the strain on overloaded sewers.

The clearances will be centralised and the Impact Assesment Division in the Ministry will be in charge of looking into this.

The notification stems from an earlier Supreme Court directive that had asked the Centre to frame something that will introduce the concept of environment impact assessment into town planning.

This was in response to a case dealing with pollution of rivers and how over the years, the sewers were choked and were just emptying their contents into the rivers.

‘‘This concept will go a long way in checking populist measures of giving clearances to building projects without calculating the impact it will have on the environment,’’ said Harish Salve, amicus curiae in the Yamuna case.