Five municipalities near Krishna violate Waste Management Act

HYDERABAD: As per the reports submitted by the Commissioner and Director of Municipal Administration and Telangana State Pollution Control Board in the National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Wednesday, there are five municipal bodies located within a distance of 3-15 kilometres from the Krishna river in Telangana that do not have a mechanism in place to process the tonnes of solid waste they generate.

Gadwal, Ieeja, Kollapur, Allampur and Makthal generate 51 tonnes of waste per day but process only 10 tonnes per day (around 20%) — a clear violation of the Solid Waste Management Act. Not surprisingly, there are over 80,000 tonnes of accumulated waste dumped in these municipalities that needs to be processed using bio-mining and bio-remediation techniques. They also generate around 16 million litres of untreated sewage per day. 

In 2016, the NGT had suo moto taken up the issue of lack of solid and liquid waste processing units from human habitations located along the Krishna river in Telangana. The State government had informed the NGT that the river flows for about 400 km in the State, passing through six districts. There are 371 Gram Panchayats within 15 km from the river, from which around 16 MLD of untreated sewage used to get discharged into the river. 

As per the TSPCB report, the State government has ensured 100 per cent door-to-door collection of solid waste in the Gram Panchayats and developed soak pits for processing sewage. However, concerning  the five municipalities, the government has said that it has received bids from private companies showing interest to take up remediation of the accumulated waste, and that the bids are being reviewed.The CDMA has informed that a deadline of March, 2022 has been set for processing of the accumulated waste and 
October, 2021 for establishing a processing facility for the fresh waste.