Environmental
Challenges
India is facing new challenges of environmental pollution
from local to national scale and increased
social resistance to industrial and urban development projects due to fear of
further degradation of environmental quality. People have lost the confidence
in environmental engineering capabilities in ensuring sustainable development. On
the other hand, recent advances in environmental technology and management
systems have evolved effective solutions to prevent environmental pollution. The task before present environmental
engineers is to regain the confidence of people by providing efficient,
economical and dependable environmental management systems.
Critical appraisal of
environmental status in India
If we examine the present status of environmental quality in
India, we find that there are no
satisfactory sewage collection and treatment
plants and hygienic solid waste disposal facilities for cities, improper
treatment of industrial wastes and no control of air pollution due to
industrial stack emissions and vehicular traffic. As a result, soil, water and
air are getting polluted. Most of our rivers are grossly polluted and have
adverse impact on agriculture and water supply
systems.
The situation is worsening due to increase in urbanization
with rampant growth of slums and multistoried buildings in and around cities.
This is creating unsustainable load on existing civil service facilities like
water supply, wastewater and sold waste collection systems, traffic problems
and vehicular pollution.
Industries consider investment for pollution control and non
productive expenditure and generally try to economize on treatment plant and ignore proper operation.
Agro-based industries
like sugar, distillery, textile and paper mills
discharge their partially treated
wastewaters on land for irrigation. However, in absence of enough dilution with
irrigation water, such wastes spoil soil quality and agricultural return water
adds pollution to rivers.
Engineering and chemical industries produce hazardous solid and liquid wastes and need specific
treatment before disposal which is found to be highly inadequate.
All industries are
trying to expand their production capacities but fall short in upgrading treatment facilities accordingly.
Unfortunately the government
agencies for Prevention and Control of
pollution have shortage of skilled manpower, resources for proper monitoring
and insufficient legal tools for effective control. Many a times, it is not possible to stop
pollution by closing industries or force local bodies due to financial and
technical constraints. As a result, they cannot exercise their assigned role
effectively.
As such the situation has already reached an alarming level
and proposed industrial corridors and smart cities may add up environmental
degradation, if proper and effective measures are not taken.
Design of adequate and efficient waste treatment facilities
and their proper operation and maintenance are essential to rectify this
situation. There are two main constraints in implementation of these schemes.
First is the unavailability of necessary finance and second is lack of
comprehensive environmental restoration plan which needs collaborative efforts
by administrators, environmental engineers and financial institutions.
Role of environmental
engineers
The role of environmental engineers is to evolve most
appropriate and innovative technology options and design a system which is techno-economically
feasible and provide detailed guidelines for strict control and monitoring of the
projects during construction as well as operation.
This requires initiative
and efforts by environmental engineers and technocrats to assist sustainable development and lays great
responsibility of providing need based, fail safe and economical solutions for
environmental protection.
These challenges also could be looked upon as great
opportunities for career development and a big boost to research in
environmental technology.
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