Raj Niwas said that during the past seven months, about 30 lakh MT of solid waste have been disposed from the landfill sites, which has resulted in reducing the height of garbage mounds at each of these sites by at least 15 mtrs.
NEW DELHI: Reducing the hight of huge stock of garbage that refered sometimes as ‘national shame’ has been turned out an achilles heel for the agencies. However, Delhi Lieutenant Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena’s efforts to bring it down has seemed to have yielded positive results with the height of the three garbage mountain – Okhla, Bhalswa, and Ghazipur, sustainably reduced by 15 meters each in just seven months.
According to Raj Niwas, the garbage that was being disposed of from the three unseemly landfill sites at an average rate of 1.41 lakh MT per month from 2019 till June 2022, went up to about 6 lakh MT per month by December 2022, thereby, increasing the legacy waste disposal by over 400 percent.
“During the past seven months, about 30 lakh MT of solid waste have been disposed from the landfill sites, which has resulted in reducing the height of garbage mounds at each of these sites by at least 15 mtrs,” the LG office informed.
“Addressing the officers, Saxena said that sufficient infrastructure and arrangements with central government agencies and industry have been now put in place to ensure a disposal rate of about 10 lakh MT per month, and the LG also instructed the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) officials to achieve this target in the time of next three months,” it said.
The LG informed that while 45 lakh MT of legacy inert and Construction and Demolition (C&D) waste had been committed to be consumed by the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) and Delhi Development Authority (DDA) at their construction sites, public participation had ensured lifting of about one lakh MT inert and C&D waste, during the last six months.
Saxena said that the waste-to-energy power plants, which were opened and upgraded during the last six months were consuming 6,000 MTs of RDF waste every day. “An innovative step of involving the corporate sector to utilize the legacy RDF waste at the landfill sites had resulted in the cement industry picking up about 15,000 to 20,000 MT of RDF waste every month for use as fuel. This has resulted in about 01 lakh MT of RDF being disposed of sustainably during the last seven months,” told LG, during his visit.
“As of now, five cement companies, situated till as far as Chittorgarh in Rajasthan, are picking up RDF from Delhi’s landfill sites. In another development paper mills situated in Western UP Districts like Shamli, Muzaffarnagar, Itawa, etc. have also started lifting nearly 100 MT RDF waste per day from the national capital,” Saxena said.
“The LG expressed satisfaction over the pace of work at Okhla and Bhalswa landfill sites, which are set to achieve the capacity of disposing of 15,000 MT of waste per day each. However, he expressed his displeasure over the slow pace of work at the Ghazipur landfill site and directed MCD officials to issue a seven-day termination notice to the contractor to expedite the work failing which heavy penalty would be imposed and criminal proceedings against the contractor will be initiated for wasting government funds and time,” Raj Niwas added.
