The Chennai Corporation is set to resume work on reducing waste at dumpsites located in Perungudi and Kodungaiyur.
The civic body’s special officer’s council has passed a resolution that calls for mass incineration to generate energy from garbage.
“The technology will reduce landfill waste to 80%,” said an official.
The civic body has also finalised options for remediation and reclamation of existing dumpsites. “We will opt for piggyback cell formation instead of bio-mining,” said the official.
The project will fall under category ‘A’, which requires environmental clearance from the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change. It will include 32 MW capacity waste-to-energy plants with an implementation timeline of five years.
The civic body will not shut down the existing small-scale waste processing facilities.
The corporation will continue to exclude construction waste from the project for collection, transportation and processing of municipal solid waste.
“The design life considered for piggyback cell is 4 years. It is 20 years for the waste-to-energy plant and sanitary landfill,” said an official.
The selected developer will be responsible for conducting the detailed study for design and engineering of piggyback cell and stability analysis. It will also prepare a micro plan to handle waste generation by major commercial buildings and institutions.
“Leachate management will be a challenge. We will monitor it real time,” said an official.
Owing to protests by residents in Kuthambakkam and Minjur-Vallur and litigation raised in the National Green Tribunal, the civic body plans to implement the waste processing facilities at existing landfills in Kodungaiyur and Perungudi itself.