Ahmedabad, May 25 (KNN) The Gujarat Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) in a meeting with the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change raised the issue of comprehensive environmental pollution index (CEPI) sampling and hazardous waste management.

The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) has not carried out sampling for the comprehensive environmental pollution index (CEPI) since 2019, according to a report in the TOI.

In the meeting, GCCI said that the performance of common effluent treatment plants (CETPs) in the state has improved over the last few year, but CPCB last carried out CEPI sampling in 2019 and after that had declared the Ankleshwar, Vapi, Vadodara,Vatva, Narol, Surat, Rajkot industrial clusters "critically polluted" and Bhavnagar as "severely polluted".

As per reports, a meeting of representatives of various industry clusters was held last week and a detailed representation was prepared. After that, former GCCI president Shailesh Patwari and Shrenik Merchant, chairman of GCCI's environment committee met senior ministry officials on Tuesday.

Former GCCI president Patwari said, "In 2009-10, CPCB had carried out CEPI monitoring of 88 industrial clusters in the country and declared 43 industrial clusters of 16 states "critically polluted areas", where CEPI scores were found above 70. These included six industrial clusters in Gujarat (Ankleshwar, Vapi, Ahmedabad, Vatva-Narol, Bhavnagar and Junagadh). Gujarat then made technical presentations to the Union environment ministry, CPCB and GPCB, and that CPCB later revised CEPI guidelines."

"According to the revised CEPI guideline of 2016, CPCB has to carry out CEPI monitoring every two years and GPCB has to do so twice a year. Accordingly, CPCB carried out CEPI monitoring in Gujarat in October 2016 and the ministry of environment on November 25, 2016, took these industrial clusters off the critically polluted list,” he added.  (KNN Bureau)