More than 5,000 wards grapple with sea of mud and rotting carcasses

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Days after the rains ceased and floodwaters receded, local bodies in seven worst-hit districts of the state are struggling with waste disposal. Experts dealing with the problem put it in perspective by pointing out that the quantity of waste generated in just two or three days of flooding in a municipality has exceeded household waste generated there in an entire year.

The cleaning mission in seven districts has so far flushed out 4,976.5 tonnes of

bio-degradable waste and 3,559.7 tonnes of non-bio degradable waste, according to latest data put out by the local self-government (LSG) department on Sunday. Normally, average waste generation per household comprising four members per day in a local body is around 2.5 kg. For municipalities, the average waste generation per day is 10-15 tonnes and this includes waste from common facilities like markets.

LSG has estimated that 5,360 wards in 428 local bodies, including municipalities and gram panchayats, have been badly affected by floods and waste is now being removed from 5.78 lakh households. While panchayat wards never felt the need to collect or process waste, local body teams are now disposing all kinds of waste from households in 3,886 wards of 387 panchayats.


ENDURING BOND: Gujarati community members in Thiruvananthapuram tie rakhi to defence personnel who took part in the rescue operations, at the Air Force Station in the state capital on Sunday

2.5 lakh wells being cleaned

About two-and-a-half lakh wells are also being cleared and treated in various local body wards and waste from these wells are being collected and disposed by the volunteer teams led by local bodies.

“All houses in flood-affected districts have had to deal with huge quantities of mud, a key factor which has accounted for the enormous quantity of waste being removed from there. Normally we never had to deal with mud as a waste component and also in panchayats a very nominal quantity of waste had to be treated outside the source of generation because a major share gets treated in house surroundings,” said R Ajayakumar Varma, executive director, Suchitwa mission.

Animal carcasses also account for the unprecedented quantity of waste. Till Sunday, 3,285 carcasses of large animals, 14,274 small animals and 3,64,079 birds have been buried in six districts. The job is not even half done and it would take a minimum of two weeks before the debris could be cleared from households and public offices, officials in the field said.

“The flood debris consists mainly of seven kinds of waste and two days of waste left over by the flood would be equal or even more than the actual quantity of household waste a municipality handles in a year. For panchayats, the task has been enormous,” said Shibu K Nair, an environmental expert who was part of the Thiruvananthapuram corporation team which did a three-day cleaning drive in Aranmula, Ranni and Kozhencheri.

Meanwhile, the death toll since August 8 touched 302 on Sunday. Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan convened a review meeting here during which it was reported that 4.62 lakh people are now being housed in 1,435 camps.