In wake of the recent fire incident at humongous garbage dump site, North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NMC) has stepped up the measures to prevent such tragedy in future. The civic body has decided to layer the garbage dump at Bhalswa landfill site withmalba (construction & demolition waste) to the height of eight inches.
The civic body has asked private agency IL&FS — which has also set up one such C&D waste treatment plant in Delhi’s Burari area — to provide required malba on regular basis, a senior NMC official said.
Mayor of North Delhi Adesh Gupta informed that all the necessary measures are being taken to avoid such tragedy.
He further informed that the corporation has deployed its 60 employees, engaged 5 bulldozers and two excavators at the site to manage and regulate the garbage 24x7.
The Mayor directed the officials to strengthen the barbed wire fencing to check the trespassing on the site by locals. Local police have also been asked to help, he said.
He added four fire tenders have been dedicated by the fire department as part of precautionary measures.
A team of senior officials, including mayor and commissioner of NMC visited the Bhalswa landfill site on Tuesday to take stock of the situation.
Several incidents of fire keep taking place at the humongous landfill site on and off, caused by natural factors or triggered by some incendiary material. It has raised concerns about the air quality in the National Capital Region further deteriorating.
The nearly 50 metre-high heaps at Bhalswa got saturated way beyond its capacity several years ago. Mayor further informed that the site is built in the 70 acres of area and its height in 62 metres. He said, 2,000 metric tonnes of garbage is being dumped on it on daily basis and currently it has 80 lakh metric tonnes of garbage.
The Mayor accompanied by Municipal Commissioner Madhup Vyas, Engineer-in-Chief Vijay Prakash, and other senior officials of the corporation and senior police officer, visited the site in the afternoon.
Mayor informed that a consultancy firm is hired for remediation of the site. The firm has done boring at 28 points to study the culture of garbage. As per the received report, it has been ascertained that the garbage is 12 metres deep below the ground, he said.
Gupta also informed that the consultancy firm would be submitting its final report by the end of the year based on which the civic body would invite global tenders for slope stabilisation, bio-mining (segregation of garbage) and capping the site.
As Delhi’s air quality on Tuesday remained in ‘poor’ category, experts warned it might deteriorate in coming days due to the toxic air coming out of the fire at the Bhalswa landfill site.
Earlier on Monday, Delhi Environment Minister Imran Hussain had expressed serious concern over the fire, as the city is already fighting the adverse impact of stubble burning in neighbouring States. He had directed the three municipal corporations to work on preventing incidents of fire at landfill sites across the city.