Civic bodies slammed for trash mountain

With national Capital reeling under the problem of managing solid waste, the situation has now reached at the “critical” level, the civic authorities appear to be clueless  in dealing with the situation. The civic authorities have literally failed to manage the segregation of garbage at every level starting from the household level or the source itself. Further, this largely non-segregated garbage is dumped at the already full beyond capacity of landfill sites which has aggravated the situation.

The waste management plants near the major landfill sites have limited capacity and treat less than half of the city's garbage generated per day. With the landfill sites soaring above their capacity and waste management plants proving futile, the civic authorities appear to have run out of ideas in dealing with the problem which has now acquired a gigantic form,  said an official, pleading anonytmity.

“The civic bodies just seem to beat around the bush and pass the buck on one another. Coming up with new garbage landfill sites is not easy as several factors come in its way ranging from environmental clearance to people protest. Nobody wants a landfill site in his backyard, they say “not in my backyard”. On the other hand the volume of waste is increasing day by day and there seems to be no solution out to deal with it”, said an environmental expert who has worked on landfill sites for a decade.

He further said that the systematic ignorance of laid down rules under “The Solid Waste Management Bye-Laws 2018”have resulted in piles of garbage lying all around in the national Capital.

As per the rules, it is up to the waste generators to “segregate and store the waste generated by them in three separate groups - biodegradable, non-biodegradable and domestic hazardous waste and then hand over segregated waste to municipal corporations after paying a user fee but waste generators never follow directives resulted in piles of garbage everywhere, a senior corporation official said.

The three municipal corporations also appear to be losing out miserably in the overall ratings for the cleanest cities of India under the Swachchh Bharat Mission-2019 as no serious measures were taken to combat solid waste issue by the civic agencies.

Delhi produces over 9,500 tonnes per day (TPD) of solid waste, but all three of its dumping grounds- Bhalswa, Okhla and Ghazipur with a collective capacity of 4,600 MTD are operating beyond their saturation point and also posing “risk to human lives'.  In addition, it is expected that the national Capital will need an additional area of 28 square km till 2020 to dump 15,000 tonnes of garbage daily.

The Okhla sanitary landfill site is under tremendous pressure as no alternative is available as of now. Nearly 2,700 metric tonnes (MT) garbage is still dumped every day there even after the SDMC had already announced to shut down the site that exhausted its life span in 2010.

According to a scientific advisory committee comprising of high level experts from the premier institutes of the country such as “Indian Institute of Technology's” (IITs), “Council of Scientific & Industrial Research” (CSIR) and “The Energy and Resources Institute” (TERI), constituted by the “Department of Science and Technology”, (Government Of India) on the advice of the Lieutenant Governor in September 2017, highlighted  that the landfill height at all the three sites is excessive with steep slopes of inadequate stability; Sites are overfilled; prone to internal and external fires due to high production of methane inside the landfills; Site specific issues for landfill stabilization and their closure; for both short and long term solutions for closure of these sites, additional space is required.

Ghazipur landfill, which was commissioned in 1984, had reached to saturation point in 2002. “It is the oldest landfill site with accumulated garbage of over 140 lakh MT and spread over 70 acres of area. The garbage height has reached 180 feets as against permissible 45-60 feets. This being a live landfill site requires alternative land to begin the remediation process. Suitable land at at Ghonda Gujran and Sonia Vihar has been identified. EDMC has roped in GAIL to flare the 34 cubic meter landfill gas. The final closure is expected to take 12 to 18 months,” it stated.

The report further stated that due to high production of methane gas inside the Bhalswa Landfill Site, it is plagued with the problem of frequent internal and external fires. Under the guidance of the Scientific Advisory Committee North corporation has started the process of dousing the internal and external fires along the unstable slopes and embedded deep below. As on July 2018 the daily dump of MSW has been reduced from 3100 MT to 2000 MT. The experts have suggested that engineered closure of this site will take approximately in 24 months, it said.

The report of scientific advisory committee also stated that all these projects will be completed in two years time by August 2020. After completion of these three projects, it is expected that no untreated garbage will be dumped at the landfill sites, it said.

It further said that the problem of garbage mounds is a legacy of six decades and the work is already underway to address these problems in a time bound manner in a comprehensive and sustainable way.