Delhi’s ‘trash mountains’ in Ghazipur and Burari are very soon going to be a thing of the past. After the Central Road Research Institute (CRRI) concluded that the garbage could be used for road construction, the Delhi Government is to use it in building new roads connecting the national highways and rural areas of Delhi.
“There are two solutions of doing away with these huge garbage dumps in the city. One is to plant trees and turn it into a green mountainous area, which has been done in Burari. The other is to utilise the garbage underneath the new roads. By removing garbage and using it for road building, the overloaded landfills in the city would be relieved,” a senior Delhi Government official told The Pioneer.
The ongoing construction of the Delhi-Meerut highway has already been approved to take up the garbage pile for a 2-kilometre stretch.
Delhi’s lieutenant-Governor Anil Baijal had called a meeting recently where the Government discussed to work out the modalities.
Earlier, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between the East Delhi Municipal Corporation, Union Ministry of Urban Development, Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways and the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI).
“The NHAI has come forward to use the garbage for the 2-kilometre stretch of the Delhi-Meerut highway. However, the authority is a little bothered about the cost of the whole exercise as it would be done for the first time,” he said.
The Delhi-Meerut highway is 81-kilometre long and 32 kilometres are on the green field. The official said the Government is mulling to re-approach the NHAI to use the garbage filling for the entire 32 kilometres and if it is done, the entire 50-metre tall mountainous dump will crash to the ground.
Initially, the apprehensions over using the garbage dump in road building had risen but after a research, CRRI has come to the conclusion that this material is safe and could be used in road constructions.
“The CRRI has researched and proved this material could be used... Now we are just
bringing the plan from lab to practice.”
The waste would be collected, segregated and then processed into material which would be used by the highway authorities.
“The problem is the solid waste management. Here the matter would be passed through the sieve which will give 70 per cent of the material for the road construction with the remaining solid matter which does not pass through sieve would be sent to the nearby waste energy plant,” explained one of the municipal corporation officials.
The minor hindrance to this plan is the transportation to the road sites of the material that needs to be packed, and the packaging could increase the road construction cost.
“The East Delhi Municipal Corporation and the NHAI are having issues with the cost as taking the material for the road construction from the garbage dump is expensive,” said the Government official aware of the details of the plan.
The permissible upper limit of dumping garbage at a landfill site is around 20 metres but in 2002, the Ghazipur landfill site exhausted its capacity to hold the waste and now it stands tall at 50 metres.