NHAI will require hardly 5 per cent to 7 per cent of total waste there. So what will happen to the rest of waste? What's the long-term plan?
At a meeting chaired by Delhi Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal, EDMC sought two years’ time to clear the 50-m-high mountain of waste at the Ghazipur landfill. This is the first time the civic body has set a deadline for the task, and comes on the heels of the shocking incident on September 1, when part of the landfill caved in, killing two and injuring many.
Sources told City Spidey that the agreement signed between EDMC and NHAI (National Highway Authority of India) was submitted at the meeting. In the agreement, NHAI said that it would require waste material from the landfill to construct part of the NH 24 from November this year.
Anil Pandey, an environmentalist and president of the federation of Vasundhara Enclave Co-Operative Group Housing Societies (CGHS), however, pointed to the uncertainties in the project. “EDMC said it will take two years to clear the garbage from the site. But the NHAI will require hardly 5 per cent to 7 per cent of total waste there. So what will happen to the rest of waste? Plus, EDMC needs a long-term solution to garbage dumping.”
Pandey added that the EDMC was established in 2012 with a plan to set up at least five waste-to-energy plants in the next couple of years. “DDA had allotted land in three sites. But in past five years since it was established, there has been only one such plant, at Shashtri Park last year,” he continued.
And daily waste generated in East Delhi has only been increasing. The waste-to-energy plant in Shashtri Park caters to about 500 metric tonnes of construction and demolition (C&D) waste a day. But an EDMC report says that in the past five years, C&D waste has increased up to 1,300 metric tonnes per day. So about 800 metric tonnes of C&D waste is still being dumped at Ghazipur, apart from solid waste of the whole of East Delhi.
A fresh report on garbage collection by EDMC says, “At present, EDMC is collecting 4,650 metric tonnes of garbage every day - of which 2,600 metric tonnes is solid waste, 1,400 metric tonnes is silt and 650 metric tonnes is construction and demolition waste.”
