NEW DELHI: The Municipal Corporation of Delhi has finally invited tenders for the disposal of 90 lakh tonnes of legacy waste in the city’s three overused landfills through bioremediation and biomining in 18 months. This could help the civic body get rid of at least a third of the 280 lakh tonnes of legacy waste lying at the Ghazipur, Bhalswa and Okhla landfills.
Till date, MCD has claimed to have processed only 55 tonnes of legacy waste with the help of 85 trommel machines. But disposing of the output generated after biomining, including inert and refuse-derived fuel, has always been a burden.
“Several concessionaires are engaged for biomining and transporting of inert in addition to supplying the material to agencies like the National Highway Authority of India,” said an official. “We still have a major portion of the inert accumulating at the landfills every day. By taking up this space, other day-to-day operations at the already saturated landfills are being affected.”
The move to engage major disposal companies has come in the wake of targets given in the report submitted in June to lieutenant governor V K Saxena on flattening the landfills. For Ghazipur, the deadline is March 2024, for Bhalswa December 2023 and for Okhla, September 2023.
MCD expects it won’t have to spend more than Rs 250 crore at one landfill for the biomining and disposal processes. “Different concessionaires will be designated for each landfill. Depending on the outcome, we may increase the quantity or intensify the process to continue reducing the accumulated waste,” said an official.
While the request for proposal was invited on August 3, MCD aims to finalise the technical bid within September 3, followed by finalisation of the financial bid.
Earlier, there was a plan to dispose of 50 lakh tonnes of waste at Ghazipur, but the cost was proving prohibitive.
Defining the three landfills in the city as a national shame and also presenting grave health hazards, lieutenant governor V K Saxena asked the general public on July 1 to come out with ideas that could help in reducing these unseemly mountains of garbage.
“The stinking heaps over 50 metre high in the capital are not only grave health hazards but a national shame! Your suggestions and participation will be of value in the efforts to get rid Delhi of over 28 million metric tonnes of waste,” the LG had tweeted.
As of now, 5,800 tonnes of fresh waste go to the waste-to-energy plants and a small portion to the composting plants. “The remaining unprocessed municipal solid waste (around 5,000 tonnes) goes to the landfills at Ghazipur, Okhla, and Bawana,” claimed civic officials.
To ensure no fresh and unsegregated municipal waste is dumped at three landfills every day in the future, MCD has targeted the establishment of two more waste-to-energy plants by 2024-25, taking the total number of such plants to five and their total processing capacity to 11,800 tonnes per day.
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