<p>Order of the National Green Tribunal (Eastern Zone Bench, Kolkata) in the matter of Debi Prasad Banerjee Vs Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change & Others dated 22.04/2024.</p> <p>The
Minister for rural development Raghuvansh Prasad Singh has stressed upon the supply of good quality of water and given highest priority to sanitation programmes in the Interntional Sanitation Year. Addressing a press conference about the out come of the recent two-day meeting of the state secretaries in charge of rural drinking water supply and sanitation in the country, he said sustainability of water sources and convergence among various programmes to achieve drinking water security was of the utmost importance.
Waste management company Greenstar has opened a new Euro 20m recycling facility in Bray, County Wicklow. The site will divert 135,000 tonnes from landfill every year and features an automated dry mix recyclables line to automatically separate aluminium and steel cans, paper, cardboard and plastics. Greenstar says the facility will be able to process 25,000 tonnes of commercial and household waste a year.
Your childhood fears about leaking plane toilets have come true. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) recently went on a surprise visit to IGI to check the airworthiness of planes and overall airport safety. The underbelly of a domestic airline's, Airbus A-320, was found to be covered with blue paint. A surprised DGCA team conducted investigation and found that the front toilet's blue flush fluid was leaking and must have got stuck (frozen, rather) when the plane was flying and then got evenly spread out on the bottom with air flow.
"We survived the deluge of 2005 but are still worried about this year." The fear, voiced by many citizens, is an apt comment on how ill-prepared the civic administration is to deal with the rains. With just weeks to go before the onset of the monsoon, contractors appointed by the BMC to clean the nullahs (drains) have completed barely 20% of the work. Although the civic administration had fixed a deadline of May 31, it has now been forced to extend it to June 8. The contract to clean the nullahs is worth Rs 72 crore and work has been spread out over two years.
Even after spending crores of rupee on the relaying and upgrading the city's sewer lines under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), civic body can hardly heave a sigh of relief that they have given the city dwellers respite from waterlogged streets during the monsoons. Thanks to the century old sewer lines and age-old pumps at various pumping stations. Moreover, engineers are also skeptic about the fate of these pumps once de-silting and sewerage-relaying projects under the JNNURM are completed.
Three applications from South West Water to discharge sewage into the Atlantic Ocean off Cornwall have been refused by Government. Environment Secretary Hilary Benn decided the effluent discharges from Tintagel Fine Screening Installation and Bossiney Sewage Treatment Works would need a higher level of treatment than that proposed by South West Water. His decision agrees with the recommendation of an independent planning inspector who conducted a public inquiry into the applications in 2006.
A board meeting of the World Bank held yesterday approved a grant assistance of US$ 127 million (Rs 8.26 billion) to Nepal to support the ongoing peace process, expand primary health services in rural areas and improve rural water supply and sanitation.
Four Chinese companies have bid for construction of the 26.5 kilometer diversion tunnel of the Melamchi Water Supply Project. The companies vying for the project are China International Water and Electric Corp (CWE), China Overseas Engineering Company, Trans Tech Engineering China and China Railway 15 Bureau, said senior officials at the Melamchi Water Supply Development Board. "We expect that the bidding process will be completed by mid-July," said Purna Kadariya, Secretary at the Ministry of Physical Planning and Works at a press meet held here Wednesday.
After facing flak for the sorry state of build-operate-transfer toilets in the Capital let out by the New Delhi Municipal Council here south of Rajpath, the civic body is getting ready to re-construct and re-furbish 113 free-to-use public toilets north of Rajpath with stricter regulations.
The government on Friday called for reinforced collaboration with Unicef to effectively address water and sanitation problems. In a meeting between Federal Minister for Environment, Hameedullah Jan Afridi and Unicef Representative in Pakistan, Martin Mogwanja, the minister pressed for the need to offset additional hygiene related expenditures through launching a comprehensive national programme in collaboration with the Unicef, said a statement issued here.
