Two days of rain worsens Bandhwari leachate run-off near Gurugram

Following fresh spells of rain on Friday and Saturday, locals residing in Bandhwari and Mangar reported large amounts of leachate run-off from the Bandhwari landfill site, 20 km from Gurugram city.

The ‘leachate problem’ at Bandhwari is alleged to have caused severe degradation of the water table in the region and poses a grave risk to the health of nearby residents.The issue of landfill run-off in the region has persisted for close to a decade, and routinely worsens each year during monsoon. A conservationist from Mangar village, which lies adjacent to the landfill, alerted Hindustan Times about the issue, saying that fresh pools of leachate had formed immediately after the weekend’s
showers.

A spot visit by Hindustan Times on Sunday confirmed that large pools of ‘kaala paani’ – as locals refer to it – had breached the boundary wall, which is broken in many places.

The spot visit also revealed trenches leading out from the holes in the wall, which locals say have been created deliberately to facilitate the release of leachate from the landfill. “Authorities do this every monsoon,” said a resident of Mangar, who did not wish to be identified as he works for a waste collector contracted by Ecogreen Energy, a private company engaged by the Municipal corporations of Gurugram and Faridabad to maintain the landfill site. “They do this knowing that it poses a grave risk to residents and the environment,” he added. “Landfills such as Bandhwari release more leachate during the rainy season because of direct exposure to atmospheric moisture and rainfall,” said Rekha Singh, an approved environment expert from the Quality Council of India under the ministry of environment, forest and climate change.

Over 2,50,000 tonnes of garbage which have been dumped at the site since 2008 lie in the open, thereby exposing them to the rain. Rainwater seeps into the waste and leaches various harmful metals and elements from it, she explained.

“This liquid is toxic and should not be allowed to come into contact with the surrounding environment,” she said.

Singh had, in 2015, tested samples from a pond inside the landfill contaminated with leachate and found that the total dissolved solids (TDS) count in the water was 6,950 mg/l, which is much higher than the permissible limit of 2,100mg/l, according to the Municipal Waste Management Rules, 2000.

She also found high levels of fluoride, phenolic compounds, cadmium and mercury present in the leachate. The first attempt at containing this problem was made last month, in the form of an in situ leachate treatment plant (LTP) set up by Ecogreen Energy. The plant is presently treating 150KLs of leachate per day; an amount which environmentalists and experts have warned will not be enough to get a grip on the problem. Another expert, a professor of environmental science at IIT Delhi, said that the only way to prevent exacerbation of this issue is to close off the landfill and restore the land.

“As the garbage is presently in direct contact with the earth, there is no way of curbing the outflow of leachate into the surrounding environment,” the professor said.

Ankit Agarwal, CEO, Ecogreen Energy, said on Sunday that the area was “totally dry till there was some rainfall a couple of days ago.”

As for the run-off, he said that the liquid in question was mostly rainwater. Ecogreen Energy, which is a subsidiary of Chinese firm Jianjing Environment, was recently penalised by both Municipal Corporation of Gurugram and the National Green Tribunal (NGT) on charges of non-compliance with the Solid Waste Management Rules, 2016.

First Published: Sep 24, 2018 04:10 IST