NGT directs Uttar Pradesh Pollution Control Board to act against industrial units found violating environmental norms in Muzaffarnagar

New Delhi [India], April 13 : The National Green Tribunal has directed the Uttar Pradesh Pollution Control Board (UPPCB) to take appropriate action, including the imposition of environmental compensation against the industrial units that are found to be violating the environmental norms in district Muzzafarnagar, Uttar Pradesh.
The Green Tribunal also directed the UP Pollution Control Board to file the action taken
report before the Registrar General of the Tribunal within four months.
The Tribunal, in its order dated December 12, 2023, appointed a committee that visited the site, collected the samples and got the analysis done. The committee submitted the final report on April 4, 2024 and it was found in the report that various industrial units are violating industrial norms.
The applicant organisation, through Advocate Aditya Giri, preferred this original application before the Tribunal, aggrieved by the increasing trend in environmental pollution in the village of Nirana, Post Bhikke, Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh, where the members of the applicant organisation have lived since the year 2010.
The plea alleged that the villagers are dying due to cancer and cancer-like diseases; some people are suffering from strange diseases in which lumps are visible on their bodies and spread rapidly all over the body.
Furthermore, villagers are dying of heart attacks and cancer, eye disease, black myopia, psoriasis, kidney failure, both child and adult asthma and many other diseases due to high levels of sulphur in air and water to understand the root cause, during the year 2016, the villagers tested the quality of water from a reputed laboratory and it was found in the lab results that the water was contaminated by the presence of bacteria caused by the
waste generated from industrial processes and silt from degraded catchments, the plea stated.
The plea stated that it is estimated that water pollution is generated from industrial waste and contributes to the major pollutant load, and this is being caused by the non-treatment of water discharged from large and medium industries located in and around the village of Nirana.
This pollution has ever since kept on increasing and has become larger in scale. The industries generate an increasing quantity of substances every year, adversely affecting essential aspects of the composition of the atmosphere, soil and water.
In the industrial high-density areas, in addition to the effects on local health and impact on nature, the villagers are confronted with damage to the social and economic functions of the environment due to unforeseen and heavy expenditures on medical treatments.
If this remains unchecked in the coming years, the amount of wastewater may increase manifold due to industrial development and wastewater supply as these waters are discharged into sewers or dumped on low-lying areas without any pre-treatment, thereby creating sewage pools, contaminating ground waters, salinizing good-quality lands around the village, and acting as a source of life-threatening disease, foul smell and breeding grounds for mosquitoes and other pathogens, the plea alleged.
The fact that all the respondent's authorities have miserably failed to discharge their responsibility towards the environment and that even the statutory mandated amount of corporate social responsibility fund is not being utilised for providing clean and safe drinking water to the people of the village.
Every year, respondents indulge in diverting crores of rupee by not spending it upon the causes of villagers and by doing so they misappropriated hundreds of crores at the cost of life of innocent villagers, the plea read.