SDMC announces Capital's first-ever engineered landfill site at Tehkhand
New Delhi: South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) has announced Delhi-NCR's first ever engineered landfill site at the Tehkhand, Okhla. The 27 acre site is currently being set up to become an engineered landfill.
The Standing Committee meeting on September 28, 2021 will provide the project its final approval. If approved then, work on the project will start in October and will take 18 months to complete, according to SDMC senior officials.
The project recently received approval on its tender and is receiving 37 per cent funding from the Swachh Bharat Mission and the other 53 per cent will be from the SDMC's own coffers as stated in the Swachh Bharat Mission's guidelines. Millennium Post spoke to SDMC officials regarding the landfill site and found out that the new site will have the capacity to handle waste without any sort of biomining for 10-12 years.
The engineered landfill will help in reducing water and waste pollution and allow disposal of waste without any hazards to public health. All the waste will be confined to the smallest practical area after excavation on the site. The landfill will have the ability to process and safely dump all its waste and collect leachate.
SDMC plans to operate a waste to energy plant at Tekhand as well, which is likely to process 2,000 tonnes of waste. The plant should be operational by September, 2022.
As of now, over 3,500-3,600 tonnes of waste is generated every day at the Okhla landfill site, the SDMC has the ability to process only 50 per cent of the waste. 13 agencies have been contracted to lift refuse derived fuel (RDF) and plastic is being segregated through trommels from legacy waste at the site. The inert material produced is dumped by a contractor at NTPC Eco park and Tajpur Pahari currently according to SDMC officials.
Plan to stop dumping waste at the Okhla landfill site by June, 2022 have been approved and the site will be completely shut down by December, 2023. Plans to supply the inert material from the site to National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) have been made to use for the construction of roads.
The Tekhand site is one of the very first steps to make Delhi landfill free.
