EDMC signs MOU, Ghazipur waste to be used by NHAI

NEW DELHI: Months after announcing to use Municipal solid waste sourced from Ghazipur landfill site as solid waste material for widening of NH-24, East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC) on Wednesday announced to ink with the agencies concerned. The Corporation said that the move will not only provide material for the highway connecting Delhi and Meerut but will also provide a solution for the disposal of over one lakh metric tonne solid waste dumped at landfill site since decades and reclamation of the landfill site too.

Commissioner, EDMC, Mohanjeet Singh informed that an MOU has been signed between the civic agency, Union Ministry of Urban Development, Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways and National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) for reclamation of the landfill site and use of Municipal solid waste dumped at the site for construction purpose.

“As per the MOU, the parties have agreed for mining, excavation and collection of the waste located at the dump site covering an area of about 29.62 hectare. The waste collected would be segregated and processed into material that can be used by the NHAI in the construction of NH-24 expansion project or other National Highways. The capacity of the Ghazipur landfill site to accept waste was exhausted more than a decade ago and now stands about nearly 70 metre above the ground level, posing a health hazard,” he said.

The Corporation, while announcing the move earlier, had said that nearly 70 per cent waste of around 14 million metric tonne of dumped waste will be used for road constructions which will be the first of its kind in the country.

The EDMC officials had informed that the landfill site got saturated earlier in 2004 but dumping of garbage is still taking place. Ignoring the actual capacity of the site, the EDMC has been dumping nearly 2,500 metric tonne garbage daily. Since the site has stored enormous volume of garbage, its disposal and reclamation of land has become a hard nut to crack. “As the EDMC area generates thousands of metric tonne waste daily, its proper disposal has been a challenging task. If things go well, the NHAI will set up a plant near the site and will segregate the solid waste,” Singh had earlier said.