New Delhi: The Lieutenant Governor (LG) of Delhi Anil Baijal told the Supreme Court that his office has been regularly reviewing and monitoring the garbage disposal plans and actions of the municipal bodies.
In an affidavit filed on his behalf, the Lieutenant Governor said that he had directed all the three corporations to augment the capacities of waste-to-energy plants for scientific disposal of waste.
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The note also pointed out that on the direction of the Lieutenant Governor, a panel, comprising high-level experts from IITs, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), has been constituted to manage 34 million metric tonnes of garbage at the three landfill sites.
The court had last week castigated the Lieutenant Governor over his attitude of being “a superman” but doing nothing to get the “mountains of garbage” of the city cleared, with one of the dumping sites even reaching a height close to that of the Qutub Minar. Urban Development Special Secretary S N Mishra, in an affidavit filed on Lieutenant Governor’s behalf, said “Immediately after assuming office on December 31, 2016, the Lieutenant Governor visited the Bhalswa landfill site in January 2017, Okhla landfill site in February 2017, Ghazipur landfill site in later part of the year”.
The affidavit also listed out the steps taken by the Lieutenant Governor’s office to manage the legacy mounds at the three landfill sites in the capital.
It said that the Lieutenant Governor had directed to set up new waste-to-energy plants by South Delhi Municipal Corporation and North Delhi Municipal Corporations and also to enhance capacity of existing plants by all three Municipal Corporations of Delhi. Regarding the Okhla landfill site in South Delhi, the Lieutenant Governor said that the process of flattening of the steep slopes for their stabilisation, provision of drainage facility, leachate treatment and methane gas treatment amongst others has been started in February 2018.
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The flattened surface will be covered with construction and demolition waste. The balance slope profiling will take approximately six-nine months i.e. by May 2019. Thereafter the steps for final closure of the legacy site mound will be taken for execution of engineered closure. The execution activity for final closure is expected to take 18-24 months ie. by July 2020, the affidavit said.
It also said that municipal solid wastes dumped at Bhalswa has been reduced from 3,100 Metric Tonnes to 2,000 Metric Tonnes.
Two new Waste-to-Energy plants with capacity of 3,500 Metric Tonnes are being set up at Bhalswa by North Municipal Corporation and at Tehkhand by South Municipal corporation respectively. The capacity of existing Waste-to-Energy plant at Ghazipur is being enhanced by 1,000 Metric Tonnes and at Okhla capacity is being enhanced…, it said.
It also said that all these projects will be completed in two years time and after completion of these three projects, it is expected that no untreated garbage will be dumped at the landfill sites.
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NDTV – Dettol Banega Swachh India campaign lends support to the Government of India’s Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM). Helmed by Campaign Ambassador Amitabh Bachchan, the campaign aims to spread awareness about hygiene and sanitation, the importance of building toilets and making India open defecation free (ODF) by October 2019, a target set by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, when he launched Swachh Bharat Abhiyan in 2014. Over the years, the campaign has widened its scope to cover issues like air pollution, waste management, plastic ban, manual scavenging and menstrual hygiene. The campaign has also focused extensively on marine pollution, clean Ganga Project and rejuvenation of Yamuna, two of India’s major river bodies.