HSPCB wants action plan for legacy waste at Bandhwari

Gurgaon: Haryana State Pollution Control Board (HSPCB) on Friday recommended the disposal of refuse-derived fuel (largely combustible components of processed waste) at the earliest at the Bandhwari waste management plant. It also directed Ecogreen, the waste management concessionaire, to set an action plan and a timeline for disposing of the screened fractions of legacy waste at Bandhwari while treating the fresh waste dumped at the site daily.
The directions came during the hearing of a petition in the National Green Tribunal (NGT), filed by city-based environmentalist Vivek Kamboj in January, about the illegal dumping of solid waste and leachate from the Bandhwari site into the fragile ecosystem of the Aravali forest areas on the Gurgaon-Faridabad Road. The green court, responding to the petition in February, directed the district administration to form a joint committee with some members from HSPCB and the district forest department and the district magistrates of Gurgaon and Faridabad.
It also made the HSPCB the nodal agency for coordination and compliance. On Friday, the committee submitted the action report regarding the status of the illegal dumping of waste from Bandhwari into the Aravalis.
The pollution board also recommended commissioning the waste-to-energy plant at Bandhwari. According to the Municipal Corporation of Gurgaon (MCG), it will hire a contractor to build the WTE plant by October 2023. The Bandhwari landfill currently has a pile of 33,00,000 MT of legacy waste. It will be an integrated waste management plant, as per a report submitted by the civic body to NGT. Further, it recommended methane gas detectors at the landfill to identify areas with high methane concentrations to prevent fires accordingly.
Other recommendations included restricting smoking in the landfill, visual checking of waste unloaded in the filling area for potential fire sources like glowing ash or burning remains, and restricting entry to the plant to authorised personnel only. When contacted, an Ecogreen spokesperson said, “We are working on most of the recommendations by HSPCB.”