Entire garbage at Ghazipur landfill site will be processed by December 2024, says Gautam Gambhir

East Delhi BJP MP Gautam Gambhir has claimed that the entire garbage dump at Ghazipur landfill site will be processed by December 2024, even as the environment committee of Legislative Assembly expressed displeasure over the speed of work. About 3,000 metric tonnes (MT) of legacy waste at Ghazipur landfill site is being processed daily. So far about 3 lakh MT of legacy waste has been processed at the dump site, Gambhir said in a statement.

Fifty per cent of legacy waste will be processed by March 2023, 75 percent by March 2024 and 100 percent of legacy waste will be processed by December-2024, he said. In a meeting of the Delhi Assembly's environment committee earlier this week, its chair and AAP MLA Atishi had expressed displeasure over the current speed of work.

The meeting was attended by the commissioners and other officials of the East and North Delhi Municipal corporations. The environment committee had on Wednesday asked the municipal commissioners of East and North Delhi to submit their plans and timelines by this coming week to reduce the height of landfill sites to the ground level.

Atishi had pulled up the two municipal corporations for having no plan whatsoever to deal with landfill site fires and the resulting air pollution in Delhi, the committee had said in a statement. The commissioners had appeared before the committee addressing the issue of fire incidents at Delhi's Ghazipur (East Delhi) and Bhalsawa (North Delhi landfill sites. Atishi had inquired about the height of the garbage dumps, the rate at which they are growing, the number and frequency of fires that have taken place on the sites in the past six months, and an estimate of emission of methane and other harmful gases per day during the meeting. At this rate, it will take you 25 years to tackle just the Ghazipur landfill, she had observed, asking the officers to submit the plans and timelines for reducing the height of the two landfill sites.

The 70-acre Ghazipur site receives about 2,000-2,200 MT of solid waste daily and about 3,000 MT on an average is processed, Gambhir said. The garbage dumped at he Ghazipur site over the years has attained the height of about 65 meters and no space is available at the ground, he said. The EDMC has installed 15 trommel machines, each of daily 300 MT capacity, for clearing the legacy waste, he said, adding the civic body had signed an MoU with the National Highways Authority of India in 2016 to use the inert material in road construction.

About 12 meter height in certain stretches of the dump has been reduced by biomining and efforts are being made to increase the number of trommels to further reduce the height of dump, he added.