Bhalswa landfill will be cleared in one year: Delhi CM Kejriwal

The current volume of the landfill is estimated at 5 million tonne, after being reduced by roughly 3 million tonne since the process to clear it began on the orders of NGT in 2019

Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday said that the garbage mounds in northwest Delhi’s Bhalswa landfill will be cleared by March next year.

Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal at Bhalswa landfill site in New Delhi on Thursday. (Raj K Raj/HT Photo)

The current volume of the landfill is estimated at 5 million tonne, after being reduced by roughly 3 million tonne since the process to clear it began on the orders of National Green Tribunal (NGT) in 2019.

“Presently, the landfill holds around 5 million tonnes of waste. Over the last two-and-a-half years, 3 million tonne of waste was removed, but the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), which is now under the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), will work at a faster pace. We are targeting the removal of another 3 million tonne of waste by December this year,” Kejriwal said after inspecting the bio-mining work at the landfill on Thursday.

Kejriwal said that while the initial target was to remove 6,500 tonnes of waste per day from Bhalswa, bio-mining work gathered pace and 9,000 tonne of garbage was processed on Wednesday.“By March-end, around 12,000 tonnes of waste will be removed every day. With the speed at which the work is progressing, the area will be cleared of all garbage by March 2024,” he added.

Presently, Delhi generates 11,332 tonne of solid waste every day and 4,360 tonne of the daily waste ends up at the Bhalswa and Ghazipur landfills. “Around 8,100 tonne of waste is cleared every day by way of segregation and via waste-to-energy plants. The process to dispose of an additional 1,000 tonne of waste every day via the Okhla waste-to-energy plant is underway. To clear the remaining waste, a plant will come up in Bawana by 2026 with a capacity of 2,000 tonne. We are also planning to make alternative arrangements to clear another 2,000tonne of waste here atBhalswa,” he said.

The daily waste generation of the city has gone up by around 237 tonnes a day rising from around 11,094.7 tonnes last year to 11,332 tonnes. HT reported on February 22 that Delhi is currently able to process only 61.5% of the waste it generates, leading to more than 4,360 tonne of garbage (1.59 million tonne per day) piling up on its over-saturated landfill sites but the MCD plans to achieve 100% waste processing levels by adding new waste processing facilities by 2025.

Cleaning up the Capital, especially its three towering landfill sites-- Okhla, Bhalswa and Ghazipur-- that stick out for miles on the horizon for areas nearby, has been a political hot-button issue and was one of the ten promises made by the AAP in the run up to the municipal elections held last year. Kejriwal had visited the Okhla landfill in southeast Delhi on March 3 and announced that the site will be cleared by December this year.

Processing waste at these sites is known as bio-mining, a process that separates various components of legacy waste such as plastic, paper, cloth, sand, bricks by passing them through a trommel machines that act as cylindrical rotating sieves.

Garbage dumping on the 70-acre site in Bhalswa, which caters to north and central Delhi, began in 1994 and in 2019, at its peak, it reached a height of 62 metres. In a progress report submitted to NGT in February, the civic body said that ten trommel machines are operational at the site, which is expected to be cleared in May 2024. The project to flatten Delhi’s three landfills began in 2019, when they collectively held 28 million tonne of legacy waste. According to the latest report submitted to NGT on February 16 this year only 7.6 million tonne, or 27%, has been processed till February 14.

The NGT report shows 36% of 8 million tonnes of waste at Bhalswa and 16% of 14 million tonnes waste at Ghazipur has been removed so far, while the civic body continues to dump fresh waste on the garbage mounds.

Kejriwal said that segregation of waste is key and urged the residents to segregate waste at home. “It is difficult to change the habits of residents overnight,” he added.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), meanwhile, said the chief minister was just reiterating the deadline fixed by erstwhile North MCD mayor Raja Iqbal Singh in March 2022. “The March 2024 deadline was reaffirmed by the MCD commissioner after the civic body’s unification in September 2022. It is strange that till the other day Arvind Kejriwal mocked at BJP leaders, but is today reaffirming the time schedules for clearance of all three landfill sites fixed by erstwhile BJP mayors,” said Delhi BJP spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor.