CHENNAI: Though Chennai’s air pollution levels are steadily increasing, lack of adequate Continuous Ambient Air Quality Monitoring Stations (CAAQMS) and data gaps in monitoring it have led to failure in capturing the real picture. Besides, Rs 3.06 crore received under the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) remains unutilised due to officials’ apathy.
The Union government launched the NCAP in 2019 to address air pollution in 102 cities, and 30 cities were added subsequently. These 132 cities are called non-attainment cities as they did not meet the national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) for the 2011-15 period under the National Air Quality Monitoring Programme (NAMP). The country’s current annual safe limits for PM 2.5 and PM 10 are 40 ug/m3 and 60 ug/m3.
The NCAP has set a target of reducing key air pollutants PM10 and PM2.5 (ultra-fine particulate matter) by 20-30% in 2024, taking pollution levels in 2017 as the base year to improve upon. But Tamil Nadu has been lagging behind. Chennai and Thoothukudi are the two non-attainment cities from the State. An analysis of the government’s air quality data by NCAP Tracker shows that Chennai, which the second-least polluted in terms of PM 10 in 2019, has slipped to the third position as the annual PM 10 load increased from 55 to 58 ug/m3.
Researchers warn that Chennai featuring among the least polluted cities could be misleading since it only has a few CAAQMS to generate credible data. “In 2019, we had data from one monitor, and in 2021, we took data from three monitors. Thoothukudi was not even considered for analysis since there was no data available. We need at least 50% uptime data and 150 days of monitoring per year for performance analyses,” a project researcher said.
Aarti Khosla, director, Climate Trends, said: “A review of NCAP in the last three years shows that despite the programme’s focus on improving air quality monitoring, only 36 out of 132 non-attainment cities have enough data to analyse their performance.”
As per official data from MoE&CC, under NCAP, `375.44 crore has been provided to 114 cities between 2018-19 and 2020-2021 and Rs 290 crore has been allocated to 82 cities for the financial year 2021-2022. The programme has an allocation of Rs 700 crore envisaged for 2021-2026. However, data presented at the NCAP’s National Apex Committee recently showed that most States have used only a little of the funds allocated. Tamil Nadu received the least funding of Rs 3.06 crore after Meghalaya, which also has not been utilised.
When contacted, a senior bureaucrat in the State government agreed that air pollution has not received the kind of impetus needed, but now the government has drawn up big plans to mitigate the problem.
The government had said it would set up India’s first Integrated Environmental Monitoring Studio to forecast air quality.