The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation is set to install five more air quality monitoring stations across Mumbai at a cost of Rs 22 crore amid concerns over worsening air quality, officials told news agency Press Trust of India on Friday.The proposed Continuous Ambient Air Quality Monitoring Stations will be installed in Mulund, Dadar, Goregaon, Charni Road and Santacruz. Mumbai's overall Air Quality Index has ranged from moderate and poor to very poor over the past week.Mumbai currently has 29 such monitoring stations operated by the BMC, the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board and the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology.
Data from these stations is sent to Sameer, the Central Pollution Control Board's national air quality monitoring dashboard.A senior civic official told PTI that two of the five proposed stations will replace existing BMC facilities. The other three will be installed at locations where there is no monitoring facility within a five-kilometre radius.
Dadar, Charni Road and Mulund currently have no monitoring stations. The Rs 22-crore project covers the installation, operation and maintenance of the five stations for five years.
The facilities are expected to become operational within six months, the official said.The official said the locations comply with Central Pollution Control Board guidelines. The facilities will serve as urban background monitoring stations to assess the general air quality in the surrounding neighbourhoods. “We have selected the best possible locations for installing the new proposed stations, taking the CPCB guidelines into consideration,” the official said.
Each automatic monitoring station will require between 300 and 700 square feet of land.The five planned stations will expand Mumbai's air quality monitoring network, with three facilities covering areas that currently lack a station within a five-kilometre radius and two replacing existing BMC facilities.- Ends