October date for pilot project to ‘manage’ Ghazipur landfill in Delhi

NEW DELHI: A pilot project may soon help the civic authorities recover land at the country’s tallest landfill at Ghazipur through waste mining, segregation and leachate management.
A month after the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) asked the office of the principal scientific adviser to Government of India to invite a global tender to achieve ‘zero’ waste, 22 applications were submitted till Tuesday, the last date of submission.
A senior East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC) official said the applications were invited to implement the pilot project over a portion of the landfill for land recovery by using multiple technologies. “The applications will be reviewed by experts, including those from IIT and the Centre’s science and technology department. By October 2, the technologies selected for the project will be announced and the work is likely to start by the middle of the month,” he added.
EDMC will be responsible for providing the land while the funds will be allotted by the Centre to the selected concessionaires for testing their technological solutions before they are considered for a scale-up, the official added. The concessionaires will get 18 months to implement the selected technologies.
“The progress will be monitored at the highest level,” said professor Krishnaswamy Vijay Raghavan, principal scientific adviser. “We aim to reduce the height of the landfill and that’s why we want to go with the best technologies. Depending on the requirement, there can be multiple people engaged on multiple portions provided these technologies are safe, scalable, affordable and applicable in given circumstances,” he said.
Shailja Vaidya Gupta, adviser to the science and technology ministry, said that as it wouldn’t be possible to find a single solution to all problems, multiple companies would be engaged over a portion of the landfill. “Their success rate can be judged only after the implementation,” she said.
The concessionaires will have to start by removing and recycling or composting legacy waste — around 14 million tonnes — at the site, and then manage the daily flow of 2,200 tonnes of fresh waste and treat it completely to avoid accumulation, the proposal stated. “The project includes waste mining, segregation of old waste and its complete utilisation. The technology will also look at treatment of leachate, mitigation of contaminated subsoil and groundwater.”
Last year, EDMC signed an agreement with AG Dauters, a Delhi-based company involved in waste processing, to generate 610MW electricity in two phases by using decomposed waste. “But the project hasn’t got the environment ministry’s nod,” said the EDMC official.