State set to remove legacy waste from various dumpsites

Kolkata: The Mamata Banerjee government has taken up the task of removal of legacy waste from the different dumpsites of the urban local bodies with the aim to reclaim that land. The move of the state government comes in the wake of National Green Tribunal directing the state to remove legacy waste and reclaim the land for curbing pollution.

There are 88 dumpsites across the state as reported to NGT and some of the civic bodies like Kolkata, Bidhannagar, Asansol, Durgapur to name a few have individually taken up removal of the legacy waste. The state government has designated KMDA as the nodal agency to execute the NGT directions in respect to 69 dumpsites in the same number of municipality area.

"We have divided these 69 dumpsites into 29 clusters and had floated Request for Proposal (RFP) for all of them. Four clusters that involve six municipalities have matured . These civic bodies caters to 22 percent of the total solid waste which is near about 8 lakh metric tonne," said a senior KMDA official. The municipalities that have come under this aegis is Siliguri, Kharagpur, Midnapore, Berhampore, Murshidabad and Bolpur. KMDA CEO, Antara Acharya said that work order for these six municipalities will be placed

soon.

The state roughly generates 62 million tonnes of solid waste annually. According to an official in the state Municipal Affairs department legacy waste is age old so composting of the same is an impossible proposition. The waste will be put into a trammel machine for segregation into two major components – waste comprising of leaves, plastic etc usable as Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) that can be used in cement factories as an alternative to fuel, and inert waste that can be used as soil conditioner.

An official in the state Pollution Control Board whose 2019 guidelines is being followed by KMDA in this matter said that the legacy waste that gets accumulated year after year forms methane gas which when comes in contact with oxygen causes fire. The smoke emitting from this waste contains carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, sulphur oxide and nitrogen oxide. It is also rich in PM 2.5 and PM 10, tiny pollutants that enter the deepest crevices of the lungs can trigger a host of respiratory diseases.

KMDA is hopeful of executing each project in around 18 months after commencement of work.