Swachh Bharat Urban: Centre asks Delhi govt. to release funds, civic agencies to work together for lanfill dumpsites.

The issue of legacy dumpsites across cities in India is a source of continuing environmental concern. The Swachh Bharat Mission – Urban being implemented by MoHUA, has taken up the challenge in a targeted manner, in a first of its kind initiative in the country. The focus of SBM-U 2.0 is now on addressing both ends of the Solid Waste management chain, viz. managing generation as well as safe disposal of municipal solid waste in a sustainable manner, to ensure that no new dumpsites are created going forward, and all legacy dumpsites are remediated. Accordingly, the Mission is focusing on source segregation of solid waste, collection and transportation of the segregated waste fractions, ensuring compliance by Bulk Waste Generators (entities generating more than 100 kg of waste per day) to manage their own waste, maximum resource recovery and scientific waste processing of all segregated fractions of waste (including plastic waste) to prevent untreated fresh waste from ending up in landfills, and bio-remediating all legacy dumpsites across the country.

During today’s meeting, it was emphasized that the key to attracting private sector participation in this sector was robust source segregation which would enable subsequent processing of waste. All MCDs were urged to step up their efforts to segregate their waste at source. It was further decided that MCDs and DDA would jointly discuss and settle all land-related issues in order to facilitate the remediation process. DDA was also requested to explore opportunities to use less than 6 mm fractions of inerts as soil enricher in their horticulture and bio-diversity parks, to the extent feasible. In terms of funding issues pertaining to remediation, it was decided that Government of Delhi would explore possibilities for considering the Green Cess Funds for transportation of excavated legacy waste, since dumpsite remediation would contribute to reduction of air pollution in Delhi. Parallelly, the MCDs were requested to undertake detailed analysis for optimizing process costs for dumpsite remediation, with comprehensive projectisation, and strong project monitoring measures.

The municipal corporations were asked to prepare detailed proposals for dealing with the waste being generated daily and send the proposals to the Ministry with the approval of the Delhi government “so as to ensure that no additional dumpsites are created”.

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