Tech used in Mumbai may be deployed in Ghazipur
NEW DELHI: A day after the Ghazipur landfill caught fire for the third time in nearly a month and was doused by firefighters around 24 hours later, the Delhi environment minister Gopal Rai on Thursday announced that the government plans to adopt a technology used in Mumbai to remove gas emitted from landfill sites to reduce the risk of frequent fires.
“The gas sucking system built at Mumbai’s dumping site was chosen after consultation with experts from all concerned departments... The biggest cause of fire in landfill sites is the continuous release of methane gas, which not only promotes fire incidents but is also harmful to the atmosphere. With the installation of this gas sucking system, emission of methane gas from the waste can be regulated to an extent,” said Rai, after a highlevel meeting with different departments on Thursday.
The minister said teams from the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) and corporations will travel to Mumbai to check out the system. “The other suggestions included installing gas wells, covering solid waste with around 10cm of soil and sorting waste,” he said.
The meeting included experts from The Energy and Resources Institue, Centre for Science and Environment, IIT Delhi, IGL, GAIL and officials from the Delhi Pollution Control Committee, municipal corporations and environment department.
Meanwhile, at the Ghazipur landfill, while firefighters put out the blaze by late Thursday afternoon, smoke continued to billow from the garbage mound till late evening. “By midnight the firefighting operation should be over. Unlike the March 28 fire, when the fire raged for almost three days, this time the fire may last a little over 24 hours. The cooling operation has started at the site,” said a fire officer at the spot.
East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC) mayor Shyam Sunder Aggarwal said the fire was doused by the fire department in the intervening night of Wednesday and Thursday. “There may be little smoke coming out of the mound but it will also go down naturally. Such landfill fires occur all over the country and they are a normal phenomenon when temperature rises and methane emissions increase,” he said. There have been three fire incidents at the landfill in the last month.
East MCD hiding corruption: Atishi
Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLA and chairperson of the Delhi assembly’s environment committee Atishi, meanwhile, accused the EDMC of corruption, claiming that the height of the landfill has not reduced despite spending crores on it.
“The Bjp-led East MCD has signed various contracts with private companies for waste management and disposal of the Ghazipur landfill, claiming to work towards reducing the height of the hazardous landfill and recycling of waste before its arrival at the landfill through waste-to-energy plants. However, the harsh reality is that every single contract that the BJP has signed in the name of waste management is tainted with corruption, and today it is trying its level best to hide these scams,” said Atishi on Thursday.
She said that the East MCD failed to produce documents around these contracts despite being sought by the environment committee. “So far they have only shared a website link, saying that only the documents available on their website will be shared. They have added that they do not have permission from the East MCD mayor to share the rest,” said Atishi.
The EDMC mayor denied the charges and said that if the Delhi government had provided adequate funds to the MCDS, then the garbage mounds would have been cleared. “We would have been in much more advanced stages in the bio-mining projects,” he said, adding that the “Delhi government is also not free from corruption.”