After Sisodia's '16 new garbage hills' claim, MCD says no plan to set up new landfill sites

New Delhi: Hours after Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia alleged that the Municipal Corporation of Delhi is planning to create "16 new garbage hills" in the city, the civic body clarified that there is "no plan" to establish any new sanitary landfill site.

The corporation, in a statement, said it is "working tirelessly" to flatten the three existing landfill sites at Bhalswa, Okhla and Ghazipur.

"It has come to the notice of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) that some claims have been made that the corporation has planned setting up new sanitary landfill sites at 16 locations in Delhi. The MCD completely denies the allegation and wishes to state in a very unambiguous term that there is no plan to establish any new sanitary landfill site," it said.

Earlier in the day, addressing a press conference, Sisodia alleged that the MCD is planning to create "16 new garbage hills" in Delhi and has identified sites at various locations in the city. He exhorted Delhiites to not let the civic body go ahead with its plan.

"While people living near the three landfill sites are already suffering due to the incompetence and negligence of the BJP, it wants to make the lives of people hell in other parts of the capital too. It is planning to create 16 new garbage hills at various locations in the city," Sisodia claimed.

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Thursday also alleged that police stopped an AAP-led group from reaching the Okhla landfill site, prompting Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to ask if police should be deployed for the protection of women or garbage hills.

Later, the group led by the party MLA Saurabh Bharadwaj held a protest and raised anti-BJP slogans.

The corporation in its statement claimed that at a few places, the MCD has "reduced the height of garbage mounds by 10-15 m".

"The Corporation is leaving no stone unturned to flatten the landfill sites. It has taken a slew of measures to reduce the height of landfill sites by deploying trommel machines, offering inert and construction and demolition waste free of cost, sale of refuse driven fuel (RDF) to industry to co-opting public for segregation of waste at source and discouraging use of single-use plastic," the statement said.

"It is heartening to see that citizens of Delhi have responded with open heart to the urgency to reduce garbage dumping at landfill sites with as many as 28 colonies becoming zero-waste colonies and 30 more colonies become 'Harit Mitra'. Many more colonies have joined the efforts to become a zero-waste colony," the civic body said.

The Corporation hopes that citizens of Delhi will participate with renewed vigour during the fortnightly celebration of Swachh Amrit Mahotsav and make Delhi a garbage-free city. The corporation is "confident of winning the fight against garbage mounds" at landfill sites with citizens' cooperation, it added.

Describing the landfill sites in Delhi as "grave health hazards" and a "national shame", Lt Governor V K Saxena in July 1 had reached out to the people and sought their ideas that could help efforts by authorities in getting rid of these "unseemly mountains of garbage".

In a post on Twitter, the LG had also shared a poster bearing a tagline "The challenge we have inherited since years! Let's come together to overcome it".

The LG in the poster had also mentioned statistics that the accumulated legacy waste across the three sites stands at 28 MT (metric tonnes) -- Ghazipur (14 MT), Bhalaswa (8 MT) and Okhla (6 MT) -- and their heights are 53 m, 54 m and 50 m respectively.

The civic officials said the deadline to flatten the Ghazipur landfill is December 2024 while efforts are on to raze the Bhalaswa dumping site by July next year. The Okhla landfill is likely to be flattened by December 2023.

In 2019, the height of the Ghazipur landfill was 65 metres which was only eight metres less than the height of Qutub Minar.

In 2017, a portion of Ghazipur landfill had fallen on an adjacent road in which two people were killed.