Firefighters try to extinguish a fire that broke out at Ghazipur landfill, in New Delhi, March 28, 2022. Photo: PTI/Ravi Choudhary
New Delhi: Days after the fire at the Ghazipur landfill site sent pollution levels in nearby areas soaring, experts on Wednesday said authorities need to speed up the bioremediation of legacy waste at such sites in the capital and build an extensive infrastructure to avoid dumping of fresh wet waste into landfills to prevent such instances.
The Delhi government’s Department of Environment has blamed the East Delhi Municipal Corporation’s “carelessness” for the blaze that broke out on Monday afternoon, turning the sky hazy grey and choking residents in nearby areas.
Environment minister Gopal Rai has directed the Delhi Pollution Control Committee to impose a fine of Rs 50 lakh on the EDMC and to take action against erring officers.
Experts said that preventing fires at landfills is a two-pronged challenge – legacy waste has to be remediated at an accelerated rate and the dumping of fresh waste has to be reduced.
“We need a very extensive infrastructure for segregation, composting, recycling, and reuse so that uncontrolled dumping of waste does not happen at landfills. Policies and funding are available. The question is how quickly we implement it,” said Anumita Roychowdhury, executive director, research and advocacy, at the Centre for Science and Environment.
“Authorities need to ensure segregated collection and transportation of waste, composting facilities in each and every ward of Delhi and material recovery facilities for recycling and reuse of waste. They will have to optimise all assets for recycling and reuse,” she said.
Bharati Chaturvedi, founder and director of Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group, said the long-term solution would be that the waste does not reach landfill sites. “The law says only inert waste can be dumped at landfill sites. There cannot be a solution if you have the wrong kind of waste in a landfill,” she said.
“Fires at landfills are a source of “shock load” (a sudden load) in terms of pollutants in the air. You will have a combination of chlorides, heavy metals, dioxins, sulphur oxides and particulate matter of different sizes. The wet waste dumped in a landfill produces methane when it rots. In hot weather conditions, methane catches fire spontaneously and the blaze spreads as it feeds on combustible material like textiles and plastics,” she explained.
Chaturvedi said authorities should adopt a carrot and stick policy to find a solution in the short-term, which could be the municipal corporations issuing directions with a deadline that only inert waste will be collected from households and giving colonies an incentive to set up composting facilities.
A massive campaign should be run for 30 days to encourage people to take up composting and the municipal corporations should buy the compost from them, she added.
Last year, authorities reported four incidents of fire at the Ghazipur landfill. In 2017, a large part of it broke away, crashing onto a road and killing two people.
Commissioned in 1984, the Ghazipur landfill site is spread across 70 acres. In 2019, the garbage dump had grown 65 metres in height.
According to an action plan submitted to the National Green Tribunal, the municipal corporations have to remediate the legacy waste at the landfill at Ghazipur by March 2022, Bhalswa by December 2023 and Okhla by March 2023.
As on February 28, 9.03 lakh tonnes of the total 140 lakh tonnes of legacy waste at Ghazipur had been remediated.