150 pollution hotspots identified
New Delhi: In a major move to control air pollution in Delhi "proactively", the Delhi government has this year notified 150 pollution hotspots — up from 13 last year — based on the tens of thousands of complaints it had received on the Green Delhi App from November 2020 to July 2021, Environment Minister Gopal Rai said on Tuesday, while launching the iOS version of the mobile application and a strengthened Green War Room.
Officials manning the war room said that the upgradation of the war room with a team of experts from the University of Chicago — had led to a spatial and temporal data analysis of the 23,300-odd complaints received on the Green Delhi app till July 28 this year — based on which a new list of pollution hotspots was prepared.
According to the new list of hotspots, South Delhi has the largest number of locations that need to be monitored — 34, followed by West District, where 27 hotspots have been pinned down. In addition, New Delhi, Central Delhi, North West Delhi and South West Delhi have 14 hotspots each with Shahdara district reporting 13 hotspots.
Further, South East, North and East Delhi districts have 6 hotspots each and North-East Delhi has 2 hotspots.
While launching the Green War Room with a new team of experts and engineers, the Environment Minister said that a team of 21 people had been appointed to man the war room 24x7 and work on complaints being sent through the Green Delhi App. Rai called the mobile app and the green war room — two of the most important aspects of the "winter action plan" announced by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.
70 Green marshals have been deployed at the disposal of the war room — from where they will be dispatched to the concerned area of complaint and coordinate with the concerned departments to ensure the complaint is resolved. Rai said that the war room will in essence, coordinate the action of around 27 departments across the Delhi government, Centre and MCDs.
Rai said that there are a total of 10 categories of complaints that residents can select from — such as garbage dumping, pothole pollution, road dust pollution, sound and noise pollution and others. He added that the war room will keep a constant eye on the 26 air quality monitoring stations of the DPCC.
The new list of hotspots has been compiled after analysing only repeat complaints from certain locations across the city - the analysis looked at both how many complaints came in for the same location and also how many times the complaints were reported from the same location in a day.
Moreover, according to the analysis, conducted by newly inducted environmental engineers, the most reported complaint was that of illegal garbage dumping on roads and vacant plots — 43.6 per cent. This was followed by complaints of pollution from potholes on roads — 17.5%, from dumping of C&D waste — 13.1 per cent, road dust — 9.1 per cent, dust pollution due to construction — 4.8 per cent, garbage burning — 4.3 per cent, and pollution from industries — 3.8 per cent.
Realtime source apportionment
Meanwhile, the Delhi Cabinet on Tuesday approved the proposal for an MoU to be signed between IIT-Kanpur and the DPCC for a real-time air pollution source apportionment study, which will this season be able to provide forecast for bad air and how to manage it.
A team of IIT-Kanpur, IIT-Delhi, The Energy & Resources Institute (TERI), and IISER Mohali will execute the study in the national capital.
Weekly, monthly, and seasonal interpretation of air quality will take place, along with additional knowledge of PAHs, molecular markers, and secondary organic and inorganic aerosols. Also, PM10 source apportionment will be considered after the winter analysis of PM2.5 and source apportionment, which will have separate financial implications.
The Cabinet has sanctioned up to Rs 12.727 crore for this.
