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Chandigarh MC to seek Centre’s green nod for waste management plant at Dadumajra on October 11
The environment clearance is mandatory for all existing and new projects listed in Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) 2006 Notification
The municipal corporation (MC) will give a presentation to the Union ministry of environment, forest and climate change (MoEFCC) on October 11 to seek environmental clearance for setting up a new integrated waste management plant at Dadumajra for 15 years.
The environment clearance is mandatory for all existing and new projects listed in Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) 2006 Notification.
Before giving the clearances, the ministry will evaluate the project’s anticipated environmental effects, considering both positive and negative effects on the as well as interconnected socioeconomic, cultural and human health issues.
The ministry will evaluate the project location so it can be distanced from the eco-sensitive areas like Sukhna Lake or Bird Park. The power requirements, plant operational flow, site connectivity, pollution and other environmental-related aspects will also be evaluated by the ministry.
“MC is committed towards early setting up of the waste plant so as to process the city’s waste effectively and timely. For this, we have started the procedure of getting the clearance simultaneously while working on tenders. We are soon going to float the tenders to speed up the work,” municipal commissioner Anindita Mitra said.
Mitra added that the required data has been prepared with the help of National Environment Engineering Research Institution (NEERI), which includes data on pollution of air, water, soil, noise, land use and socio-economic factors.
“We are expecting the clearances soon”, she said.
Aimed at effectively tackling the city’s daily waste generation of 550 metric tonnes (MT), the new plant, with a capacity of 600 tonnes per day, is proposed to comprise three facilities – one each for dry, wet and horticulture waste. Spread over 20 acres, it will be set up on a part of the Dadumajra landfill after clearing the area and as per current proposal, the project will be allotted for a total of 17 years, including two years for construction, and 15 years for operation and maintenance.
The waste management journey of Chandigarh has been chequered and two legacy waste mountains of 5 LMT and 8 LMT have come up in the past decades as a result of inadequate waste processing facilities.
At present, the civic body collects around 550 metric tonnes (MT) garbage daily, of which around 374 MT is wet waste while the remaining is dry waste. The MCC is operating a wet waste plant in the premises of erstwhile Jaypee Group Plant, whose capacity, even after upgradation and extensions, is less than 200 MT daily. With insufficient processing capacity, the civic body is dumping around 174 MT of unprocessed fresh wet waste at Dadumajra dumping ground daily, which can cause a third garbage mountain in coming years if the new plant is not set up.
Notably, MC’s failure to run the solid waste processing plant efficiently has been among the reasons for Chandigarh’s poor show in the last few Swachh Survekshan rankings, and was also a central issue during the 2021 MC elections.
