Officials discuss steps to control landfill fires

NEW DELHI : The Delhi chief secretary on Saturday took a meeting of various government agencies, in accordance with National Green Tribunal (NGT) orders, to discuss “constructive solutions to stop fires at Ghazipur site”.

Also attended by secretary of urban development, senior officials of all the civic bodies, fire department, urban development department, Central Pollution Control Board, Delhi Development Authority and Delhi Pollution Control Committee, the meeting discussed solutions for controlling fires at landfill sites across Delhi.

The minutes of the meeting will be submitted before the NGT.

“Experts from IIT Delhi, too, were present at the meeting. Different steps like construction and demolition waste and covering the landfill with silt, among others were discussed. No decision was taken,” a senior government official said.

A bench headed by NGT chairperson justice Swatanter Kumar, which ordered the meeting, had asked the chief secretary to visit the landfill sites and come up with constructive measures to prevent fires in the future.

The direction came in the wake of a major fire that broke out at the Ghazipur landfill site in east Delhi on October 19 and 20, which was extinguished after several hours of fire-fighting operations.

Officials said such fires are a result of the lack of segregation of waste at source. When mixed waste is piled up, after a short period, it degenerates into methane gas.

Methane is among the most potent greenhouse gases.

“At Ghazipur, the garbage has been dumped for years so methane gas is consistently released all over. Though there is a methane gas plant installed to trap the released gas, however, it covers only a small section of the landfill,” an East Delhi Municipal Corporation sanitation official said.