Delhi L-G asks MCD to prepare action plan to sort legacy waste sites

New Delhi: Delhi Lieutenant Governor (L-G) VK Saxena on Sunday asked the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) to draw out an action plan for the complete razing of all three garbage mountains situated at Ghazipur, Bhalaswa and Okhla area of the national capital, officials said.
Saxena has instructed the officials to submit the action plan within the next three days, they added.
The directions followed Saxena’s visit to Ghaziapur landfill site today. He was accompanied by MCD Commissioner Gyanesh Bharti and several other top officials from the civic agency.
The officials also informed that a special cell will be put in place at the L-G Secretariat to monitor the work on a weekly basis.
“L-G VK Saxena suggested adopting the reverse engineering model to ensure that the deadlines are met and goals achieved. The action plan to be submitted by MCD will be monitored on a regular basis by the L-G himself and if required, he would visit the site to see actual progress at regular intervals,” a statement issued from the civic body said.
Spread over 70 acres, the Ghazipur landfill site has legacy waste amounting to 140 lakh metric tonnes (MT) and the East Delhi areas that it caters to, generate 2,600 MT of waste on a daily basis. Similarly, the sites at Bhalaswa in North Delhi and Okhla in South Delhi contain legacy waste mounds, amounting to 80 and 50 lakh MT, respectively.
The solid waste at these sites is of three categories – Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF), Construction & Demolition (C&D) and 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 NHAI for its road construction activities, the processed C&D waste can be used for construction and filling activities.
Saxena told the officials to operationalize Ghazipur ‘Waste-to-Energy’ Plant at the earliest, so that the amount of fresh waste being added to the site is reduced.
Meanwhile, to address the issue of inert waste material, he directed the officials to explore the possibility of this being used by other states, as is being done by NHAI.
For off-take take of recycled C&D waste, the Delhi LG suggested that the possibility of making it available to the general people, builders and construction firms in the NCR region could be explored, according to the officials. (UNI)