NGT dismisses plea to dump waste in Bhatti mines
New Delhi The National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Tuesday refused to entertain an application from the South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) seeking permission to
New Delhi The National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Tuesday refused to entertain an application from the South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) seeking permission to “dump inert (non-reactive) waste from bio-mining of three landfills — Bhalswa, Okhla and Ghazipur — in the mines of Asola Bhatti Sanctuary.”
The principal bench of NGT, headed by chairperson, justice Adarsh Kumar Goel, asked SDMC to approach “more appropriate authorities” in this regard. Justice SP Wangdi, K Ramakrishnan and Dr Nagin Nanda were also part of the bench.
Asola Bhatti is a 32.71 square-kilometre notified ‘wildlife sanctuary’ that comes under the jurisdiction of the forest department of the Delhi government. “Since it’s a part of the southern ridge, permission would have to be sought from the Delhi Ridge Management Board (RMB), as well as the ministry of environment and forest (MoEF),” a senior municipal official, who did not wish to be named, said.
Additionally, a joint survey of the existing flora and fauna in the 30-metre deep pits would have to be done by the forest department that owns the area, officials said. This would include a tree census, mapping existing wildlife, bird habitats and aquifer condition, therein.
The pits were abandoned about 35 years ago, after the Supreme Court halted mining of ‘red badarpur’ sand for construction activity, due to environmental destruction resulting from it.
“Our (SDMC) application was filed on behalf of all the five civic bodies in Delhi, to dump about 265 lakh tonnes of inert waste recovered from bio-mining of the three landfills. Seven trommel machines (that act as sieves to separate garbage by size for safe disposal) have already been installed in Bhalswa, Ghazipur and Okhla dump yards. We need to deposit the inert waste somewhere,” an SDMC official said.
“The pits — numbered 2, 6, 10 and 12 — had been considered in a similar application filed by us in Delhi high court in 2013 as well. The three landfills currently hold 280 lakh metric tonnes of rotting waste in total, over a cumulative area of 152 acres, and we are trying to do away with them,” he said.
Meanwhile, a councillor from the SDMC, Ved Pal of Aya Nagar, opposed the application in the standing committee meeting of the civic body on Tuesday.
Pal said, “The aquifers below the Bhatti mines hold groundwater that is used by entire south Delhi, Faridabad and Gurugram. How could SDMC officials even imagine polluting the mines with waste from landfills? The sanctuary is a part of my ward and I will not allow this.”