Okhla Landfill To Be Flattened By December: Delhi LG

Delhi's Okhla landfill will be flattened by December through biomining, according to Lt Governor Saxena.

Delhi Lt Governor V K Saxena.

Source : PTI

An agency has been roped in for biomining of waste at the Okhla landfill and the garbage hill will be flattened by December, Delhi Lt Governor V K Saxena said on Friday.

Saxena made the remarks at the launch of a drive to plant 8,000 bamboo saplings on a two-acre patch of land cleared through biomining at the landfill, according to a statement issued by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD).

He was accompanied by Chief Minister Rekha Gupta, South Delhi MP Ramvir Singh Bidhuri and Mayor Raja Iqbal Singh.

Biomining is the process of treating garbage with bio-organisms or natural elements like air and sunlight so that the biodegradable elements in the waste break down over time.

"The agency doing biomining work at the Okhla landfill site has said that the work will be completed at this site by December this year and this landfill will be flattened," Saxena said.

The LG, however, has asked the agency to complete the work two months before the deadline, the statement said.

According to the MCD statement, around 8,000 saplings of two varieties of bamboo and 8,000 saplings of lemongrass and vetiver will be planted at the Okhla landfill.

In the last three years, 1,70,000 bamboo saplings have been planted in Delhi. Bamboo plants release 30 per cent more oxygen and grow faster than other plants. This would help reduce pollution in the city, Saxena said.

Chief Minister Gupta said people were forced to live amid garbage dumps due to the failure of the previous government in Delhi but her government is committed to remove all three garbage mountains in the city.

The height of the Okhla landfill has been brought down to 40 metres from 60 metres and 28 lakh metric tonnes of waste remains to be processed, she said.

Delhi generates 11,000 tonnes of garbage every day but only 7,000 tonnes is processed and 4,000 tonnes gets accumulated in the landfills, leading to the problem of legacy waste, the CM said.

To solve this issue, the Delhi government is setting up two new waste-to-energy plants and enhancing the capacity of the two existing ones. This would help increase the waste processing capacity from the current 7,000 tonnes per day to 15,000 tonnes per day, she said. 

(This report has been published as part of the auto-generated syndicate wire feed. Apart from the headline, no editing has been done in the copy by ABP Live.)