Delhi LG inspects landfill sites, reviews progress of disposal work

VK Saxena, according to the statement, said sufficient infrastructure and arrangements with central government agencies as well as industries have been put in place to ensure a disposal rate of about 1 million tonne per month

Lieutenant governor VK Saxena on Thursday inspected Delhi’s three landfill sites — Ghazipur, Okhla and Bhalswa — and reviewed the progress of the on-going waste remediation and disposal work.

LG VK Saxena. (Raj K Raj/HT Photo)

In an official statement, the LG secretariat said the garbage disposal rate at the three landfill sites was 141,000 tonne per month from July 2019 till June 2022, and it went up to about 600,000 tonne per month by December 2022. “During the seven months between July 2022 and February 2023, about 30 lakh (3 million) tonne of waste has been disposed from the landfill sites, which has resulted in reducing the height of garbage mounds at each of the three sites by at least 15m in seven months,” the statement read.

Saxena, according to the statement, said sufficient infrastructure and arrangements with central government agencies as well as industries have been put in place to ensure a disposal rate of about 1 million tonne per month. “We have instructed the MCD to achieve this target during the next three months,” he said.

In its Budget announced on Wednesday, the Delhi government said the three landfill sites will be cleared within two years, providing a loan of ₹850 crore for this purpose.

Saxena said while 4.5 million tonne of legacy inert and construction and demolition waste had been committed to be consumed by National Highways Authority of India and Delhi Development Authority at their construction sites, public participation had ensured the lifting of about 100,000 tonne inert waste during the last six months. “Similarly, the Waste-to-Energy power plants, which were opened and upgraded during the last six months, are consuming 6,000 tonne of combustible waste every day,” he said.

In July 2019, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) in an order said that legacy waste dumps must be “cleared within one year but substantial progress must be made and demonstrated within six months”. Till February 14 this year, only 7.6 million tonne — or 27% of the total legacy waste — had been processed, according to the latest government report submitted to NGT on February 16.

An official in the LG secretariat said that an innovative step of involving the corporate sector to utilise legacy refuse derived fuel (RDF) waste at landfill sites has resulted in the cement industry picking up 15,000-20,000 tonne of RDF waste every month for use as fuel. “This has resulted in about one lakh (100,000) tonne of RDF being disposed sustainably during the last seven months. Five cement companies, situated as far as Chittorgarh in Rajasthan, are picking up RDF from Delhi’s landfill sites. Paper mills situated in western UP districts like Shamli, Muzaffarnagar, Etah have also started lifting nearly 100 tonne RDF waste per day from Delhi,” the official said.

LG Saxena said nearly 400 acre of low-lying land belonging to the land and development office at Badarpur is also planned to being filled using inert and construction and demolition waste from the Okhla landfill site. “The LG secretariat is coordinating with the ministry of housing and urban affairs (MoHUA) to facilitate the project. At present, 50 trommeling machines with enhanced capacity are segregating waste at the three landfill sites in Delhi, up from 25 in June 2022, which is the highest in the country, anywhere. For the purpose of real time monitoring of bioremediation of waste and its disposal, control and command centres have been set up at the landfill sites and transportation trucks have been fitted with GPS,” the LG house official said.