Foreword

The Central Pollution Control Board introduced an environmental planning programme known as "Zoning Atlas for Siting of Industries" in 1995 for identifying and protecting the environmentally sensitive zones and helping in achieving developmental objectives with special reference to siting of industries, in an environmentally acceptable manner. The programme has subsequently been enhanced under the World Bank Funded Environmental management Capacity Building Project. The technical support is provided by GTZ (German Technical Co-Operation) under the Indo-German Bilateral Programme Capacities are being built on various technical aspects related to mapping and planning, on interpretation of data/maps/information for decision making purposes, on GIS, remote sensing applications, modeling etc. as well as on the application/usage of the results generated under the programme.

The Himachal Pradesh State Pollution Control Board is executing the Zoning Atlas project in the State of himachal Pradesh. In the first phase of the programme, Solan District was covered in 1996. In the second phase of the programme, Sirmour, Una and Bilaspur Districts were taken up in 1997. The Geographic Information System (GIS) computer software has been extensively used in the preparation of this report.

We express our sincere thanks to the various agencies involved viz. National Remote Sensing agency , Hyderabad , Survey of India, District Administration of the concerned Districts and various Departments of both Central and State Govenemnts for extending their co-operation and providing us with needed data and inputs for successful and timely completion of the task.

We hope, the Atlas will help industrial entrepreneurs and the Government agencies in proper siting of industrial units.