A team of environment officers from Hyderabad on Saturday collected samples from different sources of water in Indore to testing the water quality and pollution level. The team will be preparing a detailed report on the basis of the collected samples and will submit it to the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) for review.
Responding to the plea of the Madhya Pradesh Pollution Control Board (MPPCB) for reevaluating the Comprehensive Environmental Pollution Index (CEPI) which is the average amount of collective pollution level, the CPCB has sent a team of officials from Bhagwati Ana Labs, Hyderabad who will be corroborating the CEPI value as estimated by the MPPCB.
The CEPI value determined by the CPCB was 78. 75 while the one calculated by MPPCB was 70.55. A request was put for recalculation was put forth to the parent body on account of the difference in the value.
The team is collecting air and water samples as well as recording decibel levels at different corners of the city.
On Saturday, they collected water samples from Bilawali Pond, Yashwant Sagar reservoir, Khan River, hand pumps and bore wells.
“The team is collecting samples and the testing will be carried out at the laboratory in Hyderabad,” said MPPCB scientist Atul Kotiya. They will be collecting samples of pollutants in air on Sunday.
The team that had arrived in Indore on January 8 will be collecting samples till Monday.
Officials claimed that the testing will take three months for completion after which the report will be submitted to CPCB which will take the final call on lifting moratorium on construction projects.
If the fresh calculation of CEPI comes to tune of that estimated by the MPPCB, then there is a possibility that the Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) lifts the moratorium and also remove Indore from the list of the top 8 critically polluted areas of the country.
