Delhi: Civic bodies eye abandoned Bhatti Mines for dumping inert waste

A feasibility study will soon be carried out by the Wildlife Institute of India at the behest of the Ridge Management Board, the body that is mandated to protect the Ridge, a forest department official said

Delhi’s three municipal corporations are on a hunt for a “gigantic” plot -- gigantic enough to accommodate 18 million tonnes of inert waste from the three landfill sites of Okhla, Bhalswa and Ghazipur in Delhi. It is the want of such a space that is proving a major impediment to the ₹250-crore project to flatten the three landfills, said municipal officials.

The Ghazipur landfill needs to be cleared by December 2024. (REUTERS)

The civic bodies are now eyeing the abandoned Bhatti Mines in the Southern Ridge and a feasibility study will soon be carried out by the Wildlife Institute of India at the behest of the Ridge Management Board (RMB), the body that is mandated to protect the Ridge, a forest department official said, asking not to be named.

The three landfills together hold over 280 lakh tonnes of legacy waste and it has been estimated that about 60-70% of the material recovered after bio mining -- process of using trommel machines to separate legacy waste into plastic, paper, cloth, sand etc-- consists of soil, stones and inert material. Till December, only about 14% of the legacy waste has been excavated and the inert sent to locations such as new the eco park being developed in Badarpur, various low-lying areas that face water-logging in the monsoon, a park being developed by filling up the old ash pond sites in the ravines of south-east Delhi’s Tajpur Pahadi, and horticulture purposes.

Municipal officials are now looking at the abandoned Bhatti Mines. A proposal moved by the civic bodies states that the plan is to fill inert waste in pits 2,6,10 and 12 -- spread over an area of 477 acres with a 30m depth. The total estimated volume of these pits is 57,898,200 cubic metres and they can accommodate 69,478,000 metric tonnes of inert soil, the proposal said.

The area is also part of the Asola Bhatti Wildlife Sanctuary, however, and experts have opposed the move, citing possible contamination of groundwater that may adversely impact the flora and fauna of the Ridge.

In October 2019, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) also turned down a plea by the three civic bodies to use the mines. Chairperson justice Adarsh Kumar Goel asked the south civic body to approach “more appropriate authorities” in this regard.

So, a fresh proposal was sent to the RMB in March 2021 by the SDMC on behalf of the three corporations, asking for permission to use Bhatti Mines. While no approval was given by the body, it set up a five-member panel to look into the proposal.

Civic officials say the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) has now been asked to carry out a study to ascertain whether dumping inert there could harm the ecology. “The WII, which is part of the expert panel, will be carrying out an environmental assessment of the area. Once the study is complete, we will decide on the SDMC’s proposal,” said a member of the ridge management board, asking not to be named.

Already running behind the projected timelines for clearing the landfill sites through bio remediation, the municipal corporations have now submitted fresh deadlines for completion of the NGT-mandated project to flatten the three garbage mounds.

The north corporation has revised the deadline to clear Bhalswa landfill site to December 31, 2023; the Okhla landfill needs to be cleared by March 2023 and Ghazipur landfill by December 2024.

“We have got the inert material tested and it has been found fit for use in road construction projects. We are hoping that National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) will use the material,” east Delhi mayor Shyam Sunder Agarwal said.

As per the north corporation, it plans to increase the number of trommel machines to 50 the coming month. Once operational, the new units will increase the daily processing from existing 5,000 tonnes per day to 13,000 tonnes per day,” an official claimed, asking not to be named.

“NHAI has agreed to use the inert soil in Urban Extension 2 project. The NTPC will take around 3 lakh tonnes of inert soil,” the north civic body official said. North corporation also plans to use the low-lying area near the cluster bus depot in Rani Khera for dumping the inert so as to alleviate water-logging issues.

Disposal of inert in mines dangerous

Atin Biswas, programme director, municipal solid waste, Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), who is part of an on-going study of landfill sites across the country, says preliminary findings indicate the presence of heavy metals and toxic chemicals in the inert material, suggesting it could be harmful to dump them in open mines in Delhi. “Of India’s 3,159 officially designated dump sites, there is a total legacy waste of around 1,300 million metric tonnes. When bio-mining is carried out, around 70% ends up as inert waste. As part of our ongoing study, in most samples, we found the presence of heavy metals and dumping inert in mines could contaminate the water table,” he said.

Asad Warsi, a waste management expert who worked at the Indore landfill site – the model which the Delhi landfill sites are replicating, says considerable progress can be made in Delhi too, but disposing of the inert is required first. “It can be dumped in the open if required, but a lining needs to be placed at the bottom, similar to what is required at landfill sites,” he said.