PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court on Thursday ordered the temporary closure of 45 marble units in Buner district over non-compliance with the environmental protection orders of the provincial environmental protection agency.

The order was issued by the ‘green bench’ comprising Justice Yahya Afridi and Justice Syed Afsar Shah during a hearing into an EPA application for action against the marble units in question for violating the relevant rules and causing environmental degradation in Buner.

The bench also directed the deputy commissioner and district police officer to enforce the EPA EPO in Buner and ensure the closure of the 45 marble units until they complied with the order.

Provincial EPA insists units violating environmental protection orders

The countrywide high court benches dealing with environment-related petitions are called green benches.

The EPA filed the application under the Pakistan Environmental Protection Act saying there’re hundreds of marble units in Buner district, which cause water and air pollution.

It added that in order to control environmental pollution in the district, the EPA constructed a model of settling tanks in one of those units, while the rest were asked to replicate it.

The EPA said it did a survey of marble units in the district to know about environmental problems.

“Our monitoring team visited 256 marble units and found that 189 hadn’t set up settling tanks in accordance with our directives. We issued environmental protection orders to these units over the violation of the Environmental Protection Act and asked them to build settling tanks and make them functional without delay,” it said.

The EPA added that the units were asked to designate a space for marble powder waste.

It said marble units in question were given repeated opportunities and time for compliance with EPO but several of them turned a deaf ear to them.

The EPA said a report of 62 marble units flouting the EPO was presented before the high court’s green bench.

When the bench took up the case, EPA director general Dr Mohammad Bashir said 45 of the 62 marble units had still been violating the EPO.

He requested the bench to issue directives to the Buner district administration for ensuring the EPO implementation.

Dr Mohammad Bashir said marble units should be stopped from functioning until such time that they complied with the EPO and set up the required settling tanks.

Published in Dawn, February 13th, 2015

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