NEW DELHI: To tackle air pollution, brick kilns in Bihar without green technology will not be allowed to function from September 1, Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi said here on Monday.
Sushil Kumar Modi, who also holds the forest and environment portfolio, said brick kilns which do not have ‘zig-zag technology’ will be banned.
At a state environment ministers’ conference here, he said, “For making one lakh bricks, 12 tonne coal is used by traditional brick kilns. The zig-zag technology enables making the same number of bricks by using only 9.9 tonne coal.”
Hot air coming out of zig-zag kilns following a three times longer path than the straight line in traditional ones, improving heat transfer, enhanced mixing of fuel and air, thereby leading to improved combustion and less consumption of coal.
At the conference attended by Union Environment Minister Harsh Vardhan, Sushil Kumar Modi batted for introducing an online procedure for diversion of forest lands, thus doing away with submitting a hard copy of such proposals to the Centre.
The states should also be empowered to constitute the State Environment Impact Assessment Authority and State Impact Authorisation Committee without any requiring permission from the Centre, he said.
Raising the issue of Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA), the Bihar minister said related rules should be notified at the earliest so that the Rs 50,000 crore available under it could be utilised by the states.
He also demanded that states be empowered to sanction funds from the corpus.
The website of the Environment Ministry should be made more user-friendly and a compendium of its circulars should be brought out in a booklet form, he said.
Sushil Kumar Modi sought to know from Vardhan if manufacture of plastic with less than 50 micron thickness could be banned.
He also sought changes in rules and regulations concerned to allow setting up of captive biomedical waste plants by big hospitals and medical colleges, and giving states the power to ban use of motor vehicles older than 15 years.
Source: Press Trust of India