Pratap Vihar bio remediation to be completed by end-may
The Ghaziabad municipal corporation on Wednesday said it will complete the bio remediation of solid waste at the city’s biggest landfill site in Pratap Vihar by the end of May. Civic body officials said the landfill has about 4.91 lakh metric tonnes of solid waste and about 4.5 lakh tonnes of it has already been processed.
The bio remediation exercise -- the detoxification or composting of solid waste using micro organisms -- was taken up at Pratap Vihar landfill on the directions of the National Green Tribunal.
In 2018, the confederation of trans-hindon residents’ bodies, had moved the green court and contended non-compliance of Solid Waste (Management and Handling) Rules, 2016, at the Indirapuram landfill as a result of open dumping of waste sans any segregation. They also argued that frequent fires at the landfill were leading to the deterioration of air quality in the Indirapuram locality.
The corporation has already cleared the landfill in Indirapuram of solid waste after taking up bio remediation of about 1.5 lakh metric tonnes of legacy waste there. The work ended on March 31, 2022, officials said.
The bio remediation work at
the Pratap Vihar site started in October 2020 on the directions of the tribunal and is now nearing completion. The Pratap Vihar landfill site, the biggest of the two landfills in Ghaziabad, was shut down in January 2019 on the directions of the Ngt-appointed Uttar Pradesh solid waste monitoring committee as it was close to the Siddharth Vihar area, where housing and commercial development have picked up pace in the past five years. “The bio remediation process is in the final stages and it is likely to take another 15 days. Once that is finished, we will start work on a Miyawaki forest of about 50,000 trees at the landfill. A committee appointed by the tribunal also visited the site last week and they were satisfied with the work progress,” said Mahendra Singh Tanwar,
municipal commissioner, Ghaziabad corporation.
The residents of Siddharth Vihar, who moved into their newly constructed high-rises over the past five years, said the distance between the landfill and their residences is about 350m and they had faced numerous issues due to the presence of a landfill in such close proximity.
“A foul smell used to permeate the area round the clock and the stench became unbearable during the monsoon. There are still some vacant plots where solid waste is dumped and it is also set afire by unidentified persons on a regular basis. This causes further problems for residents, as the pollution affects children and senior citizens,” said Abhishek Singh, resident of Ganga-yamuna Hindon Apartments in Siddharth Vihar.