Lieutenant-Governor V.K. Saxena on Sunday visited the landfill site at Ghazipur and instructed MCD officials to submit an action plan in the next three days for razing all the three “garbage mountains” situated at Ghazipur, Bhalswa and Okhla.
The L-G said the plan should mention a fixed date of completion and suggested adopting the reverse engineering model so as to ensure the goals achieved within the submitted deadlines.
Finding a solution to Delhi’s “garbage mountains” has been on the agenda of every political party and agency involved in Delhi’s governance but a permanent solution to the legacy problem has been evading them.
Currently, the Ghazipur landfill site in east Delhi has legacy waste amounting to 140 lakh metric tonnes, while the sites at Bhalswa in north Delhi and Okhla in south Delhi contain legacy waste mounds weighing 80 and 50 lakh metric tonnes respectively.
Massive fires broke out in Ghazipur and Bhalswa landfills in the last two months, yet again raising a question on the effort taken to get rid of the legacy waste at the landfill sites.
The L-G said that once the plan is drawn out, he would himself monitor the progress and visit the sites to check the actual progress at regular intervals. “A special cell will also be put in place in the L-G Secretariat to monitor the work on a weekly basis,” Mr. Saxena added.
MCD officials were instructed to regularly put out in public domain the reduction in height of the mounds achieved as a result of their efforts at all the three sites in Ghazipur, Bhalswa and Okhla.
A statement released by Raj Niwas said that the L-G accompanied by the Chief Secretary, MCD Special Officer, MCD Commissioner and other officials went to the top of the garbage mound in Ghazipur and spent more than two hours at the site to get a first-hand experience of the magnitude of the problem at hand.
Addressing various waste
The solid waste at these sites can be categorised as refuse-derived fuel (RDF) waste, construction and demolition (C&D) waste and inert waste.
The RDF waste is utilised for power generation in ‘waste-to-energy’ plants, a small quantity of inert waste is used by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) for its road construction activities and the processed C&D waste is used for construction and filling activities.
The Raj Niwas said that during the review, the L-G was informed that the Ghazipur ‘waste-to-energy’ plant was not operational and he instructed officials to make it functional at the earliest possible.
To address the issue of huge amounts of inert waste, he directed officials to explore the possibility of it being used by other States as is being done by the NHAI. On being told that the off-take of recycled C&D waste was an issue of concern, the L-G suggested that it be made available to the general people, builders and construction firms across the city, therefore helping in revenue generation.
Mr. Saxena also asked authorities to consult field experts so that innovative technologies can be put to use for the completion of the process and called upon the entire government machinery in Delhi to gear up for achieving this goal.
