The Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB) on Thursday said it has served closure orders on 92 illegal packaged drinking units functioning around the city.

The National Green Tribunal Bench comprising Justice M.Chockalingam and Prof.R.Nagendran was hearing a case it had taken up on its own based on a news item in The Hindu revealing certain violations by the packaged drinking units.

Expressing displeasure over the “inaction” of the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB) against illegal packaged drinking units in the city, the National Green Tribunal, Southern Bench on Tuesday, asked TNPCB’s member-secretary to appear before it and provide explanation.

On March 5, the Bench took note of a news item which appeared in The-Hindu revealing violation of basic safety parameters in packaged drinking water units.

Pune: City-based Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology officially launched its second ‘System of Air Quality Forecasting and Research (SAFAR) - Pune’ for Pune and Pimpri Chinchwad on Wednesday. Other facilities such as ‘air quality and weather assessment and data on hitech-digital India’ (AWADHI) — a one stop-shop for metro air quality information was also launched.

In addition to it, an ‘interactive voice response (IVR) service’ was also introduced, where citizens of Pune can get the current and 24-hour advance forecast information on air quality and weather of Pune and Delhi just by dialing a toll free number.

One of the water bodies in the city that is used as a transit point in the city’s water supply system, Porur Lake, is crying for attention and could do with a good dose of cleaning.

Located beside the Mount-Poonamallee Road and with a flyover dividing it, the lake, spread over an area of around 200 acres, surprisingly makes for a picturesque view when viewed at a distance. Move closer and the harsh reality reveals itself.

Except for Manali, other areas saw higher RSPM levels than previous year

A. Heera, a resident of Ajax in Tiruvottiyur, remembers a time when her area was clean and beautiful. “Now, the roads are so dusty a brown cloud hovers when vehicles pass by. The roads in our area are hardly swept and with construction work and road widening on, the dust is unimaginable,” she said.

It will benefit over 646,000 people in southern areas of the city, several of which are recently brought under the expanded Chennai Corporation ambit

In a bid to augment drinking water supply to Chennaites, the Tamil Nadu government on Tuesday announced setting up of a desalination plant with a capacity to produce 150 million litre per day at a cost of Rs 1,000 crore. The plant would come up on over 10.50 acre, at present lying vacant adjacent to the existing desalination plant in Nemmeli along the East Coast Road, chief minister J Jayalalithaa said in a suo motu statement in the Assembly.

The Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB) will install solar panels in its buildings across the State at a cost of Rs 3 crore during the current financial year, said M.C. Sampath, Environment Minister here on Wednesday.

Replying to the debate on the demands for grants for his department, Mr Sampath said that at present the head office and nine offices in the districts were functioning on its own premises with laboratory facilities.

To achieve its goal of ensuring water security in the city, the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) is planning to conduct a detailed audit of the rainwater harvesting system across Chennai. This comes in the wake of Metro Water preparing a contingency plan to ensure uninterrupted water supply to the city as water levels in reservoirs are slowly dipping.

The development regulations of the CMDA states that rainwater harvesting is mandatory on all premises. The rainwater harvesting structures installed during the AIADMK regime in 2003 helped increase the ground water level in the city, as per a Metro Water monitoring report in 2011.

Since glass traps heat, buildings require more air conditioning. As a result, energy use goes up

Building green is definitely important. But it is equally important to know how green a green building is. Take the glitzy, glass-enveloped buildings popping up across the country. It does not matter if you are in the mild but wet and windy climate of Bangalore or in the extreme hot and dry climate of Gurgaon - glass is the in thing.

CHENNAI: A person in the city may be able to walk home safely at night but will have to bear with the overpowering stench of garbage and overflowing sewers.