NCR too grappling with rising garbage piles
The problem of how to dispose of waste is not limited to Delhi. With a burgeoning population, the neighbouring national capital region cities of Noida, Gurgaon, Ghaziabad and Faridabad face similar problems.
Without any proper segregation, collection and disposal of waste, Gurgaon’s neighbourhoods are becoming dumping grounds, said a Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) report.
About 90 per cent of solid waste is being taken to a landfill while the generation of waste is growing at 5 per cent annually. Experts said it is a big concern.
“Gurgaon generates over 1,000 tonnes of waste per day of which 600-700 tonnes goes to the Bhandwari waste processing plant, which is being lying defunct for the last four years,” Shubhra Puri, founder, Gurgaon First, NGO.
The Bhandwari plant is nonoperational since November 2013, and has become an open dumping site. Non-segregated waste is piling up from both Faridabad and Gurgaon, posing a health hazard.
According to the Municipal Corporation of Gurgaon (MCG), per capita incremental increase in waste generation is about 1.3 per cent per annum in the city.
Dr Shyamala Mani, professor, National Institute of Urban Affairs, had said, “Waste is not just a problem of the civic bodies, it is an issue that we all should deal with.”
The report ‘Gurugram: A framework for sustainable development’ — released on June 1 by Centre for CSE, Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG), and Gurgaon First, a city-based NGO — focused to promote zero landfill development and minimise and reuse solid waste in the city.
Experts said though decentralised composting solutions have worked in a few closed colonies, motivating people for waste segregation has been a challenge.
“Construction and demolition waste is often dumped along roads, in low lying areas, in the water recharge zones and the Aravallis,” said Chetan Agarwal, environment analyst.
The well planned city of Noida is yet to have a landfill site to treat its waste, which is often dumped on vacant land. Greater Noida, which came into being in 1992, too faces the same problem.
According to a study by the Housing & Urban Development Corporation (HUDCO), Noida generates over 660 metric tonnes of waste daily. Nearly 200 MT of municipal solid waste is generated per day in Greater Noida.
The Noida authority recently was rapped by the National Green Tribunal for dumping municipal solid waste in sector 138A and causing sir pollution.
The National Green Tribunal asked the Noida authority to provide details of the Sector 138A dump yard, located along the Noida Expressway.
Earlier, the two authorities had planned a landfill site spread over 110 acres of land in Greater Noida’s Astoli for both cities. But now the Noida authority has decided to develop a landfill site in Noida also.
“We are on way to select a private agency that will set up facilities in Noida to treat municipal solid waste. It will be hopefully done in the next three to four months. Apart from this, we have readied 110 acres in Astoli in Greater Noida, where solid waste of the two cities (Noida and Greater Noida) will be transported and treated,” said Raghunandan Yadav, senior project engineer of the Noida authority’s health department.
Solid waste is disposed in Ghaziabad at an open landfill site at Pratap Vihar where the municipal corporation regularly deploys chain-dozers and equipment to compress the nearly 950 metric tonnes of solid waste dumped daily to prevent the site from taking the shape of a mountain like Ghazipur. The previous plan to build a scientific solid waste management plant at Dundahera, near NH-24, has already run into rough weather as residents moved the National Green Tribunal.
The tribunal in December last year quashed the environmental clearance for the project and the NOC issued by the Uttar Pradesh pollution control board, leaving Ghaziabad without any facility for scientific disposal of its daily solid waste.
“We plan to develop a waste to energy plant at Galand for which the Ghaziabad development authority has handed over 18 acres of land. Technical evaluation is in progress. Work will begin soon,” said CP Singh, Ghaziabad municipal commissioner.
“We have to shift from the Pratap Vihar site but we cannot leave the site in its present condition. We have to get bio-remediation done and work on the detailed project report is in progress,” he added.