NEW DELHI :Delhi Lieutenant Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena on Sunday asked Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) officers to submit an action plan within three days for the complete razing of garbage mountains at Ghazipur, Bhalswa, and Okhla landfill sites.
The Lt. Governor, who visited the sanitary landfill site at Ghazipur today, directed MCD to constitute a dedicated team of officers to draw out an action plan mentioning a fixed date of completion for the complete razing of the three garbage sites.
He said a special cell will be put in place at his secretariat to monitor the razing of garbage mountains at the three landfill sites on a weekly basis and if required, he would himself visit the sites to see actual progress.
While recalling Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s exhortation of wiping out these garbage mounds on the launch of Swachh Bharat 2.0 on Gandhi Jayanti last year, the Lt. Governor called upon the entire government machinery in Delhi to achieve the goal.
Suggesting that the reverse engineering model can be adopted to ensure that the deadlines are met and goals achieved, the Lt. Governor said experts can be consulted so that innovative technologies can be put to use for the completion of the process of wiping out the garbage mounds.
The Lt. Governor also suggested using the recycled water from the nearby sewage treatment plant (STP) for sprinkling to settle the dust generated due to recycling activities on the mounds as it was adding to the haze and pollution in the adjoining areas.
The solid waste at the landfill sites is of three categories – 1) refuse derived fuel (RDF), 2) construction and demolition (C&D) and 3) inert waste.
While the RDF waste is being used to generate power from ‘waste-to-energy’ plants set up for this purpose, a small quantity of inert waste is being taken by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) for its road construction activities, the processed C&D waste can be used for construction and filling activities.
While reviewing the ongoing work of bio-remediation at the site that also involves segregation of waste and off take of recycled garbage, the Lt. Governor directed that the Ghazipur ‘waste-to-energy’ plant be operationalised at the earliest so that the amount of fresh waste being added to the site is reduced.
To address the issue of inert waste material, Saxena directed officials to explore the possibility of it being used by other states as is being done by the NHAI.
Lt. Governor was informed that off take of recycled C&D waste was an issue of concern and suggested that the possibility of making it available to the general people, builders and construction firms in the national capital region (NCR) region be explored.
Spread over 70 acres, the Ghazipur landfill site has legacy waste amounting to 140 lakh metric tonnes and the east Delhi areas that it caters generate 2,600 metric tonnes of waste on a daily basis. Similarly, the sites at Bhalswa in north Delhi and Okhla in south Delhi contain legacy waste mounds amounting to 80 and 50 lakh metric tonnes.
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