GURUGRAM: Residents of Gurugram and Faridabad on Sunday staged a protest near the Bandhwari waste treatment plant demanding its removal from the Aravalis.
About 90 residents, including 30 school students, gathered near the Bandhwari landfill site along the Gurugram-Faridabad road and shouted slogans like “remove this polluting landfill from our Aravali forest” .
“The theme of our campaign is ‘Green’ versus ‘Black’. The adults wore green clothes to show that our generation has been blessed to enjoy the beauty of nature and the children wore black to symbolise the dark future they will be inheriting because of the waste-to-energy plant,” said Anu froms Aravali Bachao Citizens’ Movement, which organised the protest.
Slogans by Heritage High school students echoed the entire area. They kept saying slogans such as “if waste is burnt here, we will not be able to breathe”, “enforce solid waste management rule’”, “Burning mixed waste is not a solution”.
A few children performed a street play on the hazardous impacts of single-use plastic. The protesters alleged that the government was doing little to save NCR’s last remaining green lungs and its critical water recharge zone with toxic emissions and ash that the plant will generate. “Ever since this landfill came into existence 10 years ago, it has completely poisoned our groundwater. About 60 people in our village have died of cancer and many are still suffering from the disease and other health issues. The plant will only make matters worse,” said Dhir Singh, a resident of Bandhwari village.
Another protester, Dr Sarika Verma, said: “Dioxins and furans generated by waste-to-energy plants are amongst the most toxic substances. Inhaling these can lead to respiratory and cardio-vascular diseases.”
Ash generated after burning waste plants is also very toxic when is dumped in the open, it contaminates the soil, air, surrounding water bodies and the groundwater of a place as well, the protesters said.
Waste incineration is a completely failed model in India.
More than 60% of waste generated in India is food waste that has a high moisture content. “An approved 15 MW plant at Bandhwari and a proposed plant to generate 25 MW have been designed to process much more waste than what Gurugram and Faridabad generate together, which means that the government is not following its own guidelines and the focus is to burn more than 50% of both the cities’ waste in the plant, which as per the rules, should be recycled and undergo composting”, said Neelam Ahluwalia from Aravalli Bachao.
The are in the Aravalli forest between Bandhwari and Damdama is rich in wildlife and acts as an animal corridor acting as a corridor between Asola Bhatti wildlife sanctuary in Delhi and Sariska in Rajasthan. The Wildlife Institute of India has confirmed the presence of leopards, hyenas, jackals, nilgais, porcupines, palm civets and many birds around the landfill. “The government needs to declare this entire stretch from Asola to Sariska as a wildlife sanctuary, not make polluting waste to energy plants in our Aravallis,” said Jyoti Raghawan.