Processing plant breaks down, garbage piles grow - Times of India

Processing plant breaks down, garbage piles grow - Times Of India - Umesh Isalkar, TNN Aug 4, 2011, 05.03am IST

(Buring waste video above is not related to the article content.)

IPUNE: Mounds of unprocessed garbage is why leachate is oozing in large quantities at the garbage depot in Phursungi-Urali Devachi. Civic officials said a breakdown in the plant had led to the piling up of waste.

Open dumping of garbage was stopped at the landfill site a year ago, but processing the mountains of trash take weeks and in the monsoon, it can spiral out of control.

Villagers said the civic body continues to dump garbage instead of capping the landfill. "Had the collected garbage been processed daily, there would be no pile-up," said Phursungi gram panchayat member Ranjit Raskar.

Another villager blamed the garbage processing plants. "They are inadequate to take care of the daily generation of waste. The Pune Municipal Corporation claims it has stopped open dumping. This means it should treat and process the garbage the same day. Instead, we see huge piles of garbage," he added.

The workers at the processing plants said that the plants were inadequate to deal with the generation of house-waste in Pune. Suresh Jagtap, in-charge of municipal solid waste department at PMC, said, "The plant had a breakdown recently following which the garbage remained unprocessed. The civic body is not dumping garbage."

Last May, the villagers ensured an immediate halt to open dumping since it had led to water contamination, turned the land barren and caused health problems. The then district collector Chandrakant Dalvi said open dumping would halt by May 2010, but it happened only in June.

The twin landfill sites at Phursungi and Urali Devachi cover 165 acres. The Hanjer processing plant occupies 65 acres and three acres are occupied by the carcass plant. Eleven acres were capped a few years ago and 50 to 55 acres of garbage-filled land is awaiting the process.

The garbage contains 51 % degradable waste, 31 % plastic, 1 % toxic component and 0.1 % highly toxic components. "This 0.1 % of highly toxic components emits dioxin, which is so hazardous that it can cause asthma, cancer and other respiratory ailments. It can also create impurities in the body, including the nervous system. The percentage is not trivial as it concerns 0.1 % of 12,000 metric tonnes," said environment expert Amar Dhere.

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