Lagging on work at Okhla landfill: Delhi CM Kejriwal

Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said the December 2023 deadline announced by him to clear the mound of garbage is likely to be missed

Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday said that the ongoing work to flatten the Okhla landfill site is moving at a slow pace and the existing targets have not been fulfilled, suggesting that the December 2023 deadline announced by him to clear the mound of garbage is likely to be missed.

Spread over an area of 62 acres, the Okhla landfill site had 60 lakh tonnes of legacy waste in July 2019 when the biomining project was first started on the orders of the green court. (ANI)

Read here: Kejriwal visits Bhalswa Landfill, foresees 45 lakh tonnes of waste reduction by May 2024

“Okhla landfill site had 45 lakh tonnes (of legacy waste) on November 7 last year. We had a set target to remove 30 lakh tonnes by May 2024 but due to some unforeseen incidents, we are lagging behind the target a bit. According to the set target, 18 lakh tonnes of garbage should have been removed by now but only 12 lakh tonnes could be removed,” the chief minister spoke during his visit to the landfill site.

The company deployed for the biomining work at the southeast Delhi site since November 2022 has not been able to meet the target, the CM said. Due to this, Kejriwal said, the process to hire a second company to expedite the process has been initiated, but the work cannot be awarded till the standing committee of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) is constituted following a pending Supreme Court order on the matter.

“ ...to meet our final target, a process of hiring a new agency in addition to the previous one has been initiated. The process of hiring a second agency is almost complete. However, the delay is due to the non-formation of the standing committee in MCD...Once the SC order is received, the committee will be constituted, and the second agency will be hired,” he said.

On March 3, the chief minister had last visited the Okhla site and had announced that it will be cleared by December this year — a deadline which has already been delayed by a few years after the National Green Tribunal ordered to clear the waste by July 2020.

Spread over an area of 62 acres, the Okhla landfill site had 60 lakh tonnes of legacy waste in July 2019 when the biomining project was first started on the orders of the green court. According to a drone-based assessment carried out by MCD in July 2022, the site had 45 lakh tonnes of legacy waste, which came down to 38.50 lakh tonnes in July 2023. At present, the site holds around 37.92 lakh tonnes of waste.

Biomining is the scientific process of excavation, treatment, segregation and gainful utilisation of aged municipal solid waste or legacy waste by passing them through trommel machines that act as cylindrical rotating sieves. At the Okhla site, currently 11 trommel machines are deployed at the site. There are 34 excavators, three bulldozers and more than 200 vehicles for disposal of the biomined fractions. The mixed legacy waste is excavated and fed into the rotating trommel machines and sieves. Based on the weight difference, various fractions of the mixed waste — combustibles like plastic, cloth, soil like material, C&D waste get separated. These different fractions are then transported out with combustibles being used as fuel in cement plants and waste to energy plants.

Since November 2022, only 12 lakh tonne of garbage has been cleared by against a target of around 18 lakh tonne, according to the CM.

“Once the new agency is hired, both agencies will be working together to achieve the goal of removing 30 lakh tonne of waste by May 2024,” Kejriwal added.

The government now expects the landfill to be flattened sometime in 2024, but a month is yet to be specified.

“The Delhi Government and the MCD are working diligently to remove all the mountains of garbage from Delhi,” the CM added, citing the other two landfill sites of Bhalswa and Ghazipur.

Delhi mayor Shelly Oberoi, who accompanied the CM, said that the height of the “garbage hill” has been significantly reduced. “Work is ongoing 24 hours a day to eliminate these garbage hills. the process of appointing additional agencies is also in progress. Three agencies will soon work on all three garbage hills simultaneously. So far, the chief minister has inspected two landfill sites. Soon, he will inspect the third landfill site.”

Cleaning up the Capital, especially its three towering landfill sites that stick out for miles on the horizon for areas nearby, has been a political hot-button issue and it was one of the key promises made by the ruling Aam Aadmi Party in run up to the 2022 MCD polls.

Read here: 4 years past deadline, MCD yet to clear Delhi’s landfills

Experts opine that efforts should be undertaken to reduce the daily waste being dumped in landfill sites. Bharati Chaturvedi, environmentalist and founder of Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group, said, “What we need is a model that restricts dumping fresh waste in landfills and it can only be achieved through decentralizsed composting. This can work if the capital costs and initial running costs for decentralised composting units are paid for by the government, which should buy back the compost at pre-fixed rates for its horticulture needs.”

Meanwhile, the BJP criticised the AAP for “making excuses” for not being able to fulfil targets. “Despite making tall promises, the Aam Admi Party has failed to deliver on their claims... The standing committee should be formed immediately and the Supreme Court has not granted any stay on the constitution of the panel,” said Praveen Shankar Kapoor, BJP spokesperson.