Noida: This Tuesday, the central governments Decision Support System (DSS) for pollution monitoring found Noida and Ghaziabad to be the heaviest contributors to levels of small particulate matter (PM 2.5), one of the main factors behind poor air quality, in the capital.While wind speed and direction are factors that influence this, the DSS is a reminder that Delhi-NCR is a common air shed, which will win or lose the battle against air pollutioncollectively.And the lack of uniformity in the approach is certainly not helping.The NCR cities have some deep-rooted problems that are yet to be administratively resolved to bring them on a par with Delhi. One of them is power supply, another is a crackdown on end-of-life vehicles, one more is public transport.Outages remain common across NCR cities. Snags in the distribution network, which we know as local faults, are a factor, but all problems dont stem from the grid. There are scores of housing societies that see their feeders break down frequently due to overloading because consumption, with growing use of air conditioners and other electronic gadgets, has outstripped capacity.As a result, use of diesel gensets is widespread. Between Noida and Ghaziabad, which collectively contributed around 20% of PM2.5 levels in Delhi on Tuesday, there are 740 housing societies, most of which have DG sets for power backup. Industrial units in both districts also use DG sets, as do office complexes, malls and other commercial establishments. The Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM), this year, wanted to stop use of these gensets altogether in the October-March period – the peak pollution phase when the graded response action plan (GRAP) is in force – but had to walk back on its proposed ban because of protests from RWAs and industry owners about the high cost of conversion of gensets to CNG and unavailability of gas lines in some places. The relaxation is till December 31 this year, but no major changes in ground realities are likely in this period. Rajiva Singh, president of Noida Federation of Apartment Owners Associations, said, There is no strict compliance with (emission) norms in highrises. Some of these DG sets have become old and they cant be upgraded. The CAQM has given an exemption for diesel gensets for emergency services till December 31 but still most societies have not upgraded due to technical reasons.Alok Singh, an official in the electrical safety department, said rules mandate that all diesel gensets should be fitted with emission control devices and switch to a dual fuel system. We have provided NOCs to over 1,200 establishments for installing gensets but the number of gensets in use, be it commercial, industrial or residential, is far more, he said.Neeraj Swarup, chief engineer of Pashchimanchal Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (PVVNL), said there is no shortage of power in NCR and city areas receive power supply on an average for 23 hours and 50 minutes any given day.But its in the local distribution network where outages originate, a problem that has dogged the NCR cities for years and made diesel gensets integral to daily life, unlike in Delhi, which is largely outage-free. The revamp of old power distribution lines has been sluggish in Noida and Ghaziabad. In Ghaziabad, a power department official said a Rs 500 crore upgrade plan is in the works, which will involve both upgrading and developing new substations. New substations are being developed in Noida too, but snag-prone overhead lines remain a problem. Suresh Ramasubramanya Iyer, senior fellow and area convener at the Centre for Air Quality Research of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) Suresh Ramasubramanya said the UP government needs to undertake a source apportionment study to pinpoint local cause of pollution in both cities, like Delhi has. In 2018, TERI conducted pollution source apportionment for Delhi according to which vehicular pollution in winter contributes to 30% of PM2.5 and 18% of PM10. In Ghaziabad and other NCR cities, this cannot be entirely true because Ghaziabad has traditionally been an industrial city and the role of industries needs to be examined. The data thus collected can help us in framing policies and taking action to reduce pollution in a scientific manner.A pollution source apportionment study for Ghaziabad was commissioned in 2019 to IIT Delhi but the report has not come yet. The status (of the study) is not clear. We will issue directions to UPPCB to come up with the status report of that study, said RK Singh, district magistrate of Ghaziabad. No such study has been commissioned for Noida.

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