About 3,000 metric tons of waste at the Ghazipur landfill are processed daily, the minister said. (Archive)
New Delhi:
East Delhi BJP MP Gautam Gambhir has stated that the entire garbage dump at the Ghazipur landfill will be processed by December 2024, even as the environment committee of the Legislative Assembly expressed its displeasure at the speed of work. .
Around 3,000 metric tons (MT) of legacy waste at the Ghazipur landfill is processed daily. So far around 3 lakh MT of legacy waste has been processed at the landfill, Gambhir said in a statement.
“Fifty percent of legacy waste will be processed in March 2023, 75 percent in March 2024, and 100 percent of legacy waste will be processed in December 2024,” he said.
At a meeting of the environment committee of the Delhi Assembly earlier this week, its president and AAP MLA Atishi had expressed their displeasure at the current speed of work.
The meeting was attended by commissioners and other officials from the East and North Delhi municipal corporations.
The environment committee on Wednesday asked municipal commissioners from East and North Delhi to present their plans and timelines for next week to reduce the height of landfills to ground level.
Atishi had “detained” the two municipal corporations for having “no plans” to deal with the landfill fires and the resulting air pollution in Delhi, the committee said in a statement.
The commissioners had appeared before the committee to address the issue of the fire incidents in Ghazipur (East Delhi) and Bhalsawa (North Delhi landfills) in Delhi.
Atishi had asked about the height of the garbage dumps, the rate at which they grow, the number and frequency of fires that have occurred at the sites in the past six months, and an estimate of emissions of methane and other gases. harmful per year. day during the meeting.
“At this rate, it will take 25 years to tackle the Ghazipur landfill alone,” he had observed, and asked officials to present plans and timelines to reduce the height of the two landfills.
The 70-acre Ghazipur site receives around 2,000-2,200 MT of solid waste a day and around 3,000 MT are processed on average, Gambhir said.
Garbage dumped at the Ghazipur site over the years has reached the height of about 65 meters and there is no available space on the ground, he said.
The EDMC has installed 15 trommel machines, each with a daily capacity of 300 MT, to remove legacy waste, he said, adding that the civic body had signed a memorandum of understanding with the National Highway Authority of India in 2016. to use the inert material in road construction.
Approximately 12 meters in height in certain sections of the landfill have been lowered by biomining and efforts are being made to increase the amount of trommels to further reduce the height of the landfill, he added.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)