Even as the raging fire at Bhalswa snowballs into a political crisis, the situation at the site is not new as claimed by the observers. Further, even as the situation of the crisis has found a mention in Delhi Vidhan Sabha, there has been no solution found to the crisis of the saturation limit of the dumping ground.
The residents of the area complain that besides the diseases caused due to pollution and stench, contaminated groundwater is also resulting in many diseases among the locals. Pushpa, a local resident of the area says: “Most of the areas around the site does not contain piped water supply and are dependent on the supply of the groundwater which due to severe contamination is causing diseases.”
Pushpa also alleged that as some of the area is been leveled for building a park which has been an on-going process for a long time, the process adopted in leveling the area has not been proper.
To control the situation of massive pile ups of garbage at the three major landfill sites of Delhi Bhatti mines have been proposed. However, the ecological concern which a landfill site poses to the region has prevented the project from being started.
Environmentalists, however, claim that a lot needs to be done on the issue of waste disposal in the city. At present, to deal with the pollution caused by burning of garbage, the NGT has set a fine of Rs 5,000 to offenders.
Sunita Narain of CSE highlights that there is no proper mechanism to measure the pollution which is caused due to burning of garbage at landfill sites. Narain also highlighted that there are a lot of illegal industries about which the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) does not have information which in turn is adding to the woes of Delhi’s waste disposal system. Providing examples of Pune and Kerala, Narain says there will have to be a system of composting garbage at houses itself rather than passing the responsibility to Municipal authorities.
Anumita Roychowdhury says: “Because of the lack of concern on this issue, heaps of the garbage at the landfill sites have turned into the Aravalis.” Roychowdhury also highlighted that the presence of combustible gas Methane in the decomposed garbage at the landfill sites results in fire even with a slight spark. Not only the present crisis at Bhalswa landfill site but even the Ghazipur landfill site is been considered as one of the major reasons for Anand Vihar area being the most-polluted region of the Delhi.