As the heap of garbage at Athipet gets frantically higher, the civic body at Ambattur is struggling to resolve its long standing issue of finding a suitable yard to dump the 200 metric tonnes of garbage that is generated every day.
You try not to breathe very deeply. The undulating sickening smell, a cross between rotten eggs, burnt skin and dead animals, in the company of swarms of flies welcomes you. Crows hover over a mountain of garbage and street dogs and cows pay regular visits to find something to snack on. Leachate, poisonous liquid drains from the garbage. The rag pickers begin and end their day amid the muck and stench, getting their hands dirty to find plastic bottles, instead of the government implementing its ambitious scheme of garbage segregation at source.
Astonishingly, Ambattur industrial estate, a steel and glass structure housing information technology firms, towers over the bustling manufacturing units that make Chennai the Detroit of India. It also generates 200 metric tonnes of solid waste everyday, which has resulted in the 15 to 20 feet high collection of trash, rotting in the 5.35 acres Athipet dumping yard in Ambattur, in a period of two decades. Ambattur reflects the solid waste management conditions existing in several other Indian cities and towns. The boundary of Athipet compost yard can not be traced due to overflowing garbage on the sides of roads and into residential colonies, embarrassing the municipality and supporting unorganised markets of recyclable waste, run by local rag pickers.
On the one hand, the entrepreneurial boom is pushing the government to scout for land to set up new estates. On the other, municipalities of existing estates struggle to find land to deal with their waste disposal problems.
Propositions and Oppositions
As the heap of garbage at Athipet gets frantically higher, the civic body at Ambattur is struggling to resolve its long standing issue of finding a suitable yard to dump the 200 metric tonnes of garbage that is generated every day.
The municipality’s efforts to identify an ‘acceptable’ dumping yard and use Athipet yard as a transfer point eventually are only leading to controversies. Ambattur municipality’s attempt to make use of the 10 acres of land it owns in Avadi for Waste management has faced opposition from the residents and the officials of Avadi municipality.
The issue has been simmering for about two years now, after Ambattur Municipality started dumping its civic waste in the land assigned to both Ambattur and Avadi municipalities. The councilors at Avadi alleged that garbage was dumped daily and burned without source segregation and no Project Report of the waste management method was prepared. The Avadi municipality, which also has land there for garbage disposal, was unable to segregate waste and create a compost yard due to this problem. V. Murugesan, Muncipal engineer at Avadi said: “Ambattur was developing another Athipet at Sekkadu. We are preparing a project report, developing a scientific way to treat the waste. The site needs a compound wall and interior roads.”
Furthermore, Ambattur municipality has a plan to build waste management process at a 100-acre site that is earmarked at Kuthambakkam near Poonamallee. Ambattur will share the yard with local bodies of Tiruverkadu, Valasaravakkam and Maduravoyal.
Earlier in 1999, the Ambattur municipality had set up a garbage compost yard in Kallikuppam near Thandal lake. This region is less than 400 metres away from Red Hills catchment area. Some residents formed an environment protection committee and resisted the move of the municipality. They questioned the move in the light of a government order of the Environment and Forest Department (1989) that banned setting up industries within 1km of embankments. Then, in 2003, besieged by problems over land acquisition, Ambattur and Avadi municipalities were dumping garbage in the Thangal and Avadi lakes.
Kurien Joseph, Assistant professor at the Environmental Engineering department, Anna University feels that open dumping without methodology invites objection. “As soon as the site was allotted, lorries started coming at Avadi. People consider a dump yard near their house a nuisance. It is for the municipality to gain confidence of the public by making them aware of the technology being used,” he says.
This time, ICRA Management Consulting Service, which is commissioned to draft plans for more than twenty towns across the state by Tamil Nadu Urban Infrastructure Financial Services Ltd (TNUIFSL), is suggesting ways to get the solid waste infrastructure for Ambattur, which would fall within the budget.
For the moment, 15 metric tonnes of waste generated in Ambattur is being treated through Effective Micro-organism (EM) solution daily, a project supported by a Self Help Group from Auroville.
Options
There To address the problem of source segregation, in Pammal municipality, NGO Exnora Club has started a programme whereby women SHGs work to solve the problem of source segregation. The garbage is segregated, kitchen waste is converted into organic manure and plastic waste is recycled here and in Mudichur. “Pammal district seems to be working as a small model,” says Kurien Joseph. This model could be extended to other local bodies with very little investment, suggested members of the Club.
2 problems – one is opposition, 2 using the allotted land in an old dum pard way that invites opposition. There is Pammal municipality that is doing good work. There are available models that can be replicated in Pammal. Only if authorities are strong willed to implement MSW rules.
