A day after the Supreme Court slammed the Central government for its lack of vision on cleaning up the Ganga, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) imposed a Rs 5 crore fine on a polluting industry. On Thursday, it ordered the Simbhaoli Sugar Mills and its distillery in Uttar Pradesh to pay a compensation of Rs 5 crore to the Uttar Pradesh Pollution Control Board (UPPCB) for polluting the ground water as well as the river Ganga (through Phuldera drain).
The tribunal relied on the “polluter pays” principle while passing the order. The money received will be used by UPPCB for “cleaning of Syana Escape Canal, preventing and controlling ground water pollution, installation of an appropriate ETP or any other plant at the end point of Phuldera Drain where it joins river Ganga in order to ensure that no pollutant is permitted to enter River Ganga through that drain,” the order says.
The compensation amount is also to be used for restoring quality of ground water. The tribunal also directed the industry to clean up the sludge in the Phuldera drain as ordered earlier.
Another polluting industry, Gopaljee Dairy Pvt Ltd, has been fined Rs 25 lakh in the same order. NGT also ordered the unit to install online monitoring system for relevant parameters of treated effluent discharge as agreed by UPPCB with real time data transmission facility to UPPCB within three months.