Ambient air quality monitoring in mining areas of Odisha soon

Bhubaneswar: Keeping in view large scale pollution in mining areas and major junction routes in the state, the steel and mines department will soon have ambient air quality monitoring systems soon. This was decided at a high level state task force meeting convened under the chairmanship of chief secretary at the State Secretariat through video conferencing here today.

While the Odisha State Pollution Control Board will have an online process through these stations to monitor and analyse the levels of pollution, it will also send the weekly reports to the steel and mines department, the chief secretary stressed. Transport ban will be issued on those mines found to be exceeding pollution norms.

According to sources, as of now, the monitoring systems are placed in 34 iron ore mines and five important junctions in the routes of transportation. Further, 38,000 trucks in which GPS tracking system had been installed will be connected with a software called i3MS which will feed data to the monitoring stations, the meeting further decided.

Between December 2016 and May 2017, around 443 raids were conducted. While 4 vehicles were seized, 55835 metric tonne coal was seized and a fine of Rs 2.71 lakh was collected as penalty.

Besides the Chief secretary also stressed on starting a mechanism where freight transporting vehicles will also have an automatic revision of prices as in case of general transport buses in the state.