Govt posts list of units polluting Ganga

The government on Thursday posted an exhaustive list of industries polluting Ganga in the public domain and asked them to clean up their operations or face action under the Environment Protection Act.

“Currently there are 764 grossly polluting industries, out of which we inspected 704. We issued directions in 164 cases and served closure notice on 45 polluting industries,” union environment minister Prakash Javadekar said in the Rajya Sabha.

The industries include chemical, pulp and paper, distillery units, dairies, sugar factories, dyeing units and tanneries that spread over Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal.

The list was posted on the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) website following a National Green Tribunal (NGT) order.

“CPCB has already identified the grossly polluting industries on the basis of concentration of pollutants in effluent discharged into river Ganga," the minister added.

He said half of the domestic waste, one third of industrial waste and nearly two-thirds of agricultural waste go untreated into water bodies and action would be taken against polluting units.

Revival of Ganga is one of the prominent poll promises of the Narendra Modi government. In the last three decades, more than Rs 980 crore was spent on cleaning up the mighty river under Ganga Action Plan-I and II.

The CPCB inventorised 144 drains discharging waste water into Ganga directly and the total waste water discharge from these drains is 6475 million litres per day (mld). The government plans to come out with its detailed Ganga clean up plan by the end of 2014.