SAMBALPUR: Displaced by Hirakud dam project, the fishermen residing in periphery villages of Hirakud dam reservoir (HDR) are finding it difficult to eke out a living.

An expert committee of APPCB has pointed out the presence of unapproved products in samples of 15 drug and pharmaceutical manufacturing units. The findings were part of a report sought by the Appellate Authority under the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act and the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, with respect to an appeal filed by 18 drug and pharmaceutical manufacturing units.

The report has mentioned that the products were other than those permitted under Consent For Establishment and Consent For Operation given by the APPCB.

Persons running the manual dyeing units on the Kaliyanoor Road protested the demolitions stating that the TNPCB spared the bigger units and targeted the manual dyers. TNPCB District Environmental Engineer (DEE) K. Gokuladas who headed the drive, told them that all illegal units would be removed without any bias.

The protestors then guided the TNPCB officials to a unit on a sugarcane field on the Kaliyanoor Road. “It would have been impossible to identify it without the help of the villagers. The unit with three winches was in a concrete building that looked like a house and was locked from outside,” the DEE said.

Night surveillance concept has failed in its aim to check the flouting of pollution control norms by industrial units during dark hours, due to lack of manpower and organisational deficiencies.

Absence of a sewerage treatment plant in Bhubaneswar has led to release of urban and industrial effluents into the rivers untreated, in turn polluting the rivers from which Capital sources its drin

Recycling could be the new mantra for industries in the State as policy makers and experts stressed on the need to develop technologies to reuse waste to realise the ‘Vision 2023’ goal of sustainable industrial production in Tamil Nadu.

Speaking at a day-long seminar on ‘Waste to Wealth – Entrepreneurial opportunities’ here on Wednesday, environment and forests department secretary C V Sankar said the concepts of industries are changing and there is a need to change the process so that waste could be reused.

The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has asked the ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) to quantify the environmental damage caused by the sinking of the Panama-owned vessel MV Rak, which sank off the coast of Mumbai last year.

Not only did the sinking of MV Rak result in a massive oil spill but 60,000 metric tonnes of coal was dumped into the ocean following the sinking.The NGT has also issued notices to Mumbai Maritime Board, the Maharashtra state government and the ship’s owner Delta Shipping Maritime Services with the latter being asked to pay for the damages caused to the marine ecology due to the oil spill.

Hindustan Zinc plans to plant 70,000 saplings at its Rampura Agucha zinc mine in Rajasthan.

Though the district level coordination committee directed the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB) to register cases with the police against the owners of illegal textile processing units and those who rented their land for establishment of such units, not a single case has been filed so far.

The committee, established based on the directions of the Madras High Court, had give clear instructions to the TNPCB authorities a few weeks ago, asking them to file complaints so that the police could initiate criminal action against those running illegal textile processing units and those providing their lands for such units.

The reconstituted leather developed in the last five to six months at CLRI