Issue notification to ban RO purifiers by year-end, NGT tells govt

The National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Tuesday asked the Union environment ministry to issue a notification to ban the use of RO purifiers, having total dissolved solids (TDS) in water below 500 milligrams per litre, by year-end. The green tribunal had directed the ministry to prohibit the use of RO purifiers where TDS is below 500 mg per litre and to sensitise the public about its ill-effects of on water.

The NGT granted more time to the ministry after it informed the green tribunal that due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic the exercise could not be completed, reported PTI.

“Even after one year, further extension of time has been sought by MoEF on the ground of lock-down,” NGT Chairperson Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel-headed bench said. “Let necessary action be now completed positively by December 31, 2020,” PTI reported the bench as saying.

In January, the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) had asked four months’ time for executing the green tribunal order.

The ministry in its plea had said that it needed at least four months for effective compliance of the NGT order; the first two months for the wide circulation of draft notification for inviting comments and the other two months for the incorporation of comments, finalisation of notification and obtaining approval from the Ministry of Law and Justice, said the report.

The NGT had earlier said the delay in compliance is causing harm to public health and the environment.

The tribunal has also asked MoEF to make it mandatory across the country to recover 60% water wherever RO is permitted, the PTI report said. NGT will hear the mater next year on January 25.

The plea was filed by NGO Friends, seeing conservation of water by reducing its wastage, mainly due to the unnecessary use of RO systems.