Encroachments, garbage, parking make Anand Vihar city's top polluted

NEW DELHI: The Environment Pollution Prevention and Control Authority (EPCA) on Tuesday said excessive encroachments, poor garbage management and wrong parking of vehicles near Delhi's Anand Vihar bus terminal were aggravating the poor air quality in one of the worst polluted regions of the capital. The Environment Pollution Prevention and Control Authority (EPCA) inspected the inter-state bus terminus in east Delhi on Tuesday.

The authority said it found that massive traffic congestion and slow traffic movement in Anand Vihar was caused by "excessive encroachment within and outside the bus terminal". Buses stationed at wrong spots were also one of the anomalies found by the EPCA. The team also found garbage dumped at several places across the ISBT and lack of public conveniences -- all leading to aggravation in the air-quality in one of the worse polluted regions in Delhi, an EPCA official said.

The team led by EPCA chairman Bhure Lal directed the authorities of the bus terminus to fix within a month the anomalies at the 25-acre facility that operates bus services between Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

Emissions of fine particles like PM2.5 increase by 1.5 to two times due to congested or slow-moving traffic, especially from diesel engines.

"There are other places to be inspected as well. The EPCA chairperson's surprise inspection at Anand Vihar is just one of those places," the official said. On Tuesday, the Central Pollution Control Board in Anand Vihar recorded 218 units of PM2.5 and 482 units of PM10 at 12.58 pm, while the past 24 hours record found the PM2.5 at 238.48 units and PM10 at 699.07 units.

The international permissible limit for PM2.5 is 25 micrograms per cubic metre, while for India it is 60. For PM10, the safe limit is 100 units.

The officials also asserted that this kind of raids across the Capital would be continued to curb the pollution. According to EPCA, they have informed the Delhi government regarding some places where actions against transports are needed to control the vehicular pollution.

The experts said that vehicular pollution is one of the major problems in the capital which the government has failed to monitor and control.

The EPCA also suggested that regular study of the air quality index from various stations would give the

proper idea regarding where the need of curbing pollution is present.

A day before Diwali, the EPCA started implementing the "very poor" and "severe" categories of its Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) -- which includes stricter measures -- to curb air pollution in Delhi and adjoining areas.