CM Manohar Lal Khattar offers tax relief, sops to Bandhwari but plant stays there

GURUGRAM: A day after they met chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar to air their concerns about the waste-to-energy (WTE) plant being built by Ecogreen Energy Private Limited, the state government announced a few sops to assuage residents of Bandhwari.
The CM also laid the foundation stone of the project on Friday even as the village continued to voice its opposition to the plant.

In order to allay the fears of villagers, Khattar said the government would send two educated youths from the village and local councillor Mahesh Dayma to China to visit Ecogreen facility there. “The trip will help them clear their doubts on effects of the technology being adopted at the WTE plant. However, if the villagers are still not convinced, we will think about relocating the plant to a place which is a few kilometres away from the proposed site,” he said.

Once commissioned, the WTE project will be the country’s biggest such plant with a power production capacity of 25 MW, one MW higher than what Delhi WTE in Bawana generates.

The CM also announced a road project to link Bandhwari village with Sector 57 to improve connectivity in the area. He also announced property tax exemptions for people living in Bandhwari for the next five years. The CM also offered waivers in electricity bill payments. “Since people of the village are suffering due to its close proximity to the waste dumping site and a WTE plant is being built on the village land, we will give all villagers 50% discount on their electricity bill payments for next five years,” said Khattar.

The plant is being developed at a cost of Rs. 502 crore and will be ready by 2019. According to the CM, the plant which will treat leachate from the dumped waste is almost ready and will be functional within this month.

Ankit Agarwal, CEO Ecogreen, said the plant would process the waste only after it was segregated. “Once the waste is brought to the waste treatment site, it will be segregated into degradable and non-biodegradable waste. After this,the biodegradable waste will be turned into compost and the rest of the waste will be used for production of electricity,” he said.

The chief minister also reiterated that the WTE plant would be developed in compliance with all rules and regulations laid out by the National Green Tribunal (NGT) and Solid Waste Management rules, 2016.

Sources, however, indicated that the chief minister’s announcement was just an attempt to appease the villagers.

“When we met the CM on Thursday night, we were told to come to Bandhwari plant for a discussion with him, officials and Ecogreen representatives on the way forward. Instead, they turned us away by just announcing some sops only for Bandhwari villagers,” said Dheeraj Tanwar, a resident of Gwalpahari. Interestingly, tax relief and other waivers have been offered only to Bandhwari village even though five more villagers in the vicinity have been bearing the brunt of garbage dumping at the plant for years. Tanwar said when he raised it with the CM, he dismissed it saying “other villagers are okay”.

Several other residents of these villages, including Gwalpahari, Pali, Baliyawas, Ghata and Behrampur aired similar concerns about the sops offered by the state government.

“Most of us did not even go to the event in protest against the government’s decision. Those who went to the inauguration of the plant are BJP supporters from these villages. How would property tax exemptions help us tackle water contamination and air pollution?” said Mangal Tanwar, another resident of Gwalpahari.

The CM had earlier refuted all environmental concerns about the waste-to-energy plant, calling such concerns a matter of perception. He said there was no solid base for the issues raised with regards to the plant.

When TOI asked him why the state government was investing in technology that has failed to yield results worldwide, Khattar said the models of waste-to-energy plants were different from each other, adding that the one adopted by the Haryana government had all necessary clearances. He said the government was sure the WTE would not cause any health problems.