Pollution monitoring station at Golden Temple to start operations within week

The much-awaited ‘pollution monitoring station’ set up jointly by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB) and municipal corporation on the Golden Temple premises will start operating within a week.
Set up in the ‘Galliara’, the work on the PPCB-SGPC joint venture ‘Continuous Ambient Air Quality Monitoring station’ is complete and it will collect data of pollutants around the shrine every 15 days. Air pollution has been a concern as it was stealing the sheen away of the gold-plated shrine.
The station will keep record of pollutants and experts will find out their source to check them.
Of the `1.1-crore project cost, PPCB contributed 50% and the rest was shared by the SGPC and the municipal corporation. The station will be managed by a private firm.
Pollution board executive engineer Jaswant Singh Randhawa said, “The station will cover around 2-km radius. It is a very advanced technology and will produce data on about 17 parameters. It will also point towards the source of a particular pollutant, besides recording the wind speed.”
He said they will be able to know whether source of the pollutants is construction work, vehicle emission, stubble burning or industries.
The data will be collected every fortnight and its evaluation will be done for 10 days.
SGPC additional secretary Daljit Singh Bedi said, “To cure a disease, one has to first find out the cause and that’s what the monitoring station will do. Studies have shown that Golden Temple is losing sheen due to pollution. We will check the sources of pollution on the basis of data collected at the station.”
Project stats
Name: Continuous Ambient Air Quality Monitoring Station
Location: Galliara
Cost: `1.1 crore
Agencies involved: PPCB, SGPC, MC
Function: It will record the level of the pollutants in 2-km radius of Golden Temple and also suggest their possible source.
Main sources of pollution are diesel generators being used by hotels, vehicular traffic, stubble burning and hearths used by goldsmiths.