Despite an agreement with NHAI, several meetings with DDA and rulings by NGT, the waste mountain at the site continues to grow.
It’s been more than a month that a portion of the Ghazipur landfill collapsed, killing two passers-by and injuring many others, but it is shocking to see that garbage is still being dumped at the site.
This despite both Delhi’s lieutenant governor Anil Baijal and the National Green Tribunal (NGT) ordering a ban on garbage dumping at the site. NGT had asked East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC) to find an alternative location for waste dumping, but the latter had said there was none. The Ghazipur landfill continues to see about 1,000 tonnes of waste being dumped every day, and stands at almost 200 ft tall.
After NGT’s directions to find an alternative site, a series of meetings was held between Delhi Development Authority (DDA) and EDMC. DDA suggested two alternative locations - in Ranikhera village and at the Yamuna flood plains - but both were struck down. The latter by NGT and Ranikhera by residents of the village who sat on protest against the move. As a result, EDMC says it has no option but to continue dumping waste at the Ghazipur landfill.
When City Spidey contacted EDMC, Vivek Pandey, additional commissioner of the corporation, said, “There has been no alternative land allotted by DDA. But we are trying to find other solutions. The amount of waste being dumped at the site has also gone down. Earlier, where more than 1,200 tonnes of waste used to be dumped at the site every day, now only 700 tonnes of waste is dumped. This is because we have increased the capacity of both the waste-to-energy plants.”
Pandey also said EDMC had started fresh waste bio-stabilisation with microbial technology to minimise the release of toxic gases from waste. He said, “Following the lead of the Gurgaon-Faridabad landfill sites, EDMC has adopted the bio-stabilisation process as a pilot.”
EDMC had also got into an agreement with the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) to use the waste for the construction of a 22-km-long stretch of NH 24, but even that seems to have fallen through, as last week NHAI told NGT that it could use waste only for 2 km of the stretch.
