Air pollution in Mumbai has been increasing for the past several days. Guidelines have already been issued to prevent air pollution. However, considering the recent increase in air pollution, the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board has announced new guidelines for stone crushers, hot mix projects and ready-mix cement factories (RMCs) for the Mumbai metropolitan area.
For the past six months, guidelines have been implemented for various construction areas, development works, stone crushers, bakeries and readymix factories to improve air quality in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. Meanwhile, due to the speed of development work going on in Mumbai and air pollution caused by readymix cement factories, the board has urgently announced new guidelines. A minimum of 20000 square meters of reserve space for captive-ready mix concrete projects must be provided within the minimum 20000 square meter construction project area planned as per these guidelines.
Existing projects with captive-ready mix concrete are required to be fully boxed within the next three months, for which a bank guarantee of INR 10 lakh is required to be deposited with the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board. Also, if a construction project is 70 percent complete, the captive-ready mix concrete plant must be shifted within a month. If a new readymix factory is to be set up in the Municipal Corporation, Nagar Parishad area, the permission of the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board Committee is required. Along with this, new commercial projects must be at a distance of 500 meters from national highways, state highways and district major roads from an area with a population of 1,000. Also the distance from school, college, hospital and court must be 500 meters.
For new commercial projects, projects outside the municipal, city council area require a minimum of 4 thousand square meters of space. Commercial RMC projects established from scratch are required to complete box type enclosure within the next 3 months for which a bank guarantee of INR 25 lakh is required. Also there will be a ban on increasing the capacity of RMCs installed for commercial projects from the outset.
Meanwhile, the guideline notification to control the problem of air pollution caused by readymix cement factories has been announced in 2016 itself. However, the board has announced new guidelines to control the increasing pollution in Mumbai.
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