The old trenching ground situated along Sahastradhara Road continues to pose problems for the people living in the area who are seeking a permanent solution to the problem. They further state that they have been requesting the officials of the Municipal Corporation of Dehradun (MCD) to build a public park on the old trenching ground but work on this has been put on the backburner.
Shobha Kaur who lives in the area said, “For quite some time, the old trenching ground has been a major source of problems for us. After we protested some months ago, the dumping of garbage here was stopped but the problem does not end here. The area is filled with a vast quantity of garbage which also ends up littering the road especially during the rains. The area around the site is stinky preventing the people even from breathing fresh air.” The many hundred tonnes of garbage still lying here in the open can also be a reason for many diseases, she added.
Another resident, Prem Kumar said, “The MCD has stopped dumping garbage here but people from nearby areas come at night and dump garbage. We cannot stop them even though ultimately we have to face the resulting problems. Recently there was a case when a portion of the old trenching ground caught fire which was later extinguished but then there should be a permanent solution also because there is a residential area nearby.”
Expressing concern about the problem, the Danda Lakhond ward councillor Abhishek Pant said, “The dumping activity has been stopped but the garbage that is still strewn here is a very big problem. We have requested the officials to build a park in the area. If the proposed park is approved it would not just benefit the people but it would add to the respect of the civic body in the mind of the people.”
Speaking of the matter, the Dehradun municipal commissioner Vinay Shankar Pandey said, “The construction of the park on the old trenching ground was under discussion when I was the vice- chairman of Mussoorie Dehradun Development Authority (MDDA). Dehradun lacks a proper large park. If someone has to even go for a walk he/she prefers the Forest Research Institute campus which is far away for the majority of the people. If a public park is built on the old trenching ground it would be the first big and proper public park of its kind in the city. Now as this comes under our work purview, construction of the park would be taken up as one of our top priorities. Some major steps would be soon taken regarding this.”
It should be mentioned here that for many years all the solid municipal waste from the city was dumped in this trenching ground along Sahastradhara Road. The dumping was finally stopped after garbage dumping was started at the new MCD facility at Shishambada some months ago.
