Bandhwari: Drone surveillance to check progress of legacy waste processing

The Municipal Corporation of Gurugram will conduct monthly drone surveys of the Bandhwari landfill to monitor waste processing by private agencies and assess the volume of legacy waste. Gurugram currently dumps 100 tonnes of garbage at the landfill daily, while the site has 2.5 million tonnes of legacy waste and is estimated to be 35 metres tall. The MCG processed a record 230,000 tonnes of legacy waste in May. The landfill covers 28.5 acres, with 10 acres being used to establish a waste-to-energy plant.

Gurugram: The Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) will carry out a drone survey of the Bandhwari landfill every month to keep a tab on the volume of legacy waste, civic body officials said on Tuesday.

Gurugram, India-May 01, 2023: A old site of the waste treatment plant located at Gurugram-Faridabad road near toll plaza; Villagers of Bandhwari village have protested against the new site made by the MCG to dump the garbage, in Gurugram, India, on Monday, 01 May 2023. (Photo by Parveen Kumar/Hindustan Times)(Pic to go with Leena Dhankar's story)

Officials said the drone surveillance will also check the waste processing procedures of the private agencies hired by the civic body.

MCG commissioner PC Meena said drone surveillance is important for an authentic and scientific study. “Such surveillance has helped us in the past and we have decided to use drones once a month to monitor the present situation in the Bandhwari landfill. Our aim is to process around 15,000 tonnes of waste every day,” he said.

Meena further said, “We will also do a mapping of the height of the landfill in various places through drone photography, as it will help in assessing the amount of legacy waste that needs to be cleared on a daily basis”.

The landfill site in Bandhwari is spread over 28.5 acres out of which 10 acres of land is being utilised to set up a waste-to-energy (WTE) plant.

“We are parallelly processing both legacy as well as fresh waste. At present, we are processing about 10,000 tonnes of legacy waste every day. In some parts of the landfill, the height of the waste has also reduced by two to three metres. It will take eight months for the landfill site to get cleared,” said Meena.

There are five private agencies working on the landfill site and MCG has plans to hire three more to expedite the processing of waste.

MCG has received ₹132 crore from urban local bodies department to hire the new agencies that will process 500,000 metric tonnes of waste daily. The civic body has already floated tenders to invite the agencies, officials said.

Meena said the civic body processed 230,000 tonnes of legacy waste in May — which has been the highest so far. As per the MCG, around 170,000 tonnes of waste was processed in April, 140,000 tonnes in March, 80,000 tonnes in February and 180,000 tonnes in January this year.

The MCG has also decided to install 13 CCTV cameras at the landfill site. The additional commissioner has directed officials to install internet protocol (IP) cameras for real-time tracking of waste management in the landfill.