1 Remediating Open Dumps and Recycling of Spaces Mrs Almitra H Patel Member, Supreme Court Committee for Solid Waste Management

2 OPEN WASTE DUMPS ARE NOT BEING IMPROVED. This FIRST deadline set by the Municipal Solid Waste [MSW] Rules 2000, is the least followed : “Improvement of Existing Landfill sites as per provisions of these rules, By or earlier.” Perhaps for want of clear directives on how to manage the huge variety of open dumps we have. But there are do-able solutions for all of them.

3 Dumping along highways is the commonest, hard to handle in-situ, but easiest to STOP

4 Hill town chutes send waste out of sight into lovely valleys. 1-week bio- stabilised fresh waste can cover & heal these scars with new growth.

5 Dehradun buries its raw waste in trenches in a seasonal riverbed, hard to treat there. It can be bio-stabilised above-ground in windrows instead.

6 Many dumps are small. Keep out leachate-producing rainwater by shaping into convex heaps, with diversion drain uphill and catch-drain on lower slope

7 Add soil cover to control smoke & fires, and seed with local plants to help convert methane to CO 2

8 Lucknow’s dumping into the Gomti river-bed is most shocking, but can be bio-remediated if the will is there

9 Major garbage hills like Pune’s create leachate-pools below…

10 … which seriously pollute open wells upto 4 km away, v difficult to restore.

11 This destroys nearby farmland and provoked local litigation at Hyd too

12 But even vast burning dumps like Hyderabad’s Autonagar are being bio-remediated. Pune is next.

13 Both Hyd & Pune will run on sales of compost to nearby farmers with NO Payment To / From the bio- miner. Only a 5-yr contract is reqd.

14 Instead of wasting water, fuel, skilled firemen for fire control, cities can spend for bio-culture & JCBs to bio-stabilise incoming waste as per MSW Rules.

15 Mumbai’s Gorai dump improve- ment in 2004 is a proven success.

16 Bio-mining cleared 1 hectare of a 9- meter high hill of 4-yr old garbage down to ground level in 3 months New land was made available for waste disposal at a cost of just Rs 9/sft (vs. Rs 600/sft for next-door real estate). Waste volumes reduced by 35%, recyclables were recovered. Compost made available for Mumbai’s Horticulture Dept was not used for long because of corruption in Dept for purchase of red earth and manure.

17 Bio-mining needs very simple eqpt Compacted old waste was loosened and scraped off in layers by a tractor-harrow, then sprayed with composting bio-culture from a tanker-truck with high-pressure pump, formed into windrows & turned weekly by JCB. Odor-control sanitisers were also sprayed at Gorai where high-rise apts came up nearby.

18 Tractor-harrows are best for loosening the waste, which its dozer blade then forms into windrows.

19 Composting bio-culture is mixed in large sintex tanks, then pumped into portable tankers for spraying.

20 Leachate can also be pumped onto heaps and acts as good bio-culture

21 Heaps are turned as for aerobic composting of fresh waste. The SAME HEAT is generated in old waste!

22 At each turning, hired rag-pickers retrieve buried recyclables, which partly cover their labour cost.

23 After 3-4 weekly turnings, the waste is dry, volume-reduced & ready to sieve by either manual or motorised simple portable sieves.

24 Gorai’s compost was left for BMP’s use as they’d paid for expt. Gorai’s full 15 ha. can be levelled by bio-mining for recreational land use, and its compost used on-site for landscaping

25 About 15-20% rejects remain after old biomining, mostly inerts. This is Nasik’s “engineered landfill” for its similar compost rejects from new waste.

26 Successful bioremediation is being sabotaged by greed and politics. Gorai dump is to be closed after WP 489/04 in the Mumbai High Court. Instead of bio-mining and levelling it at a cost of Rs 1.5 crores, BMP appointed ILFS as consultant for Rs 1.75 crore fee. They recommend “capping” for landfill-gas capture at a cost of Rs 40 crore to BMP. Bio-mining PREVENTS methane generation!

27 Capping must NEVER be done for landfill-gas capture on dumps with no bottom and side liners in place. Gases will simply leak out through the soil. After capping at Malad on which the huge MindSpace IT Complex was built, landfill gases are ruining their IT hardware and causing serious technical problems, though no human morbidity is noticed yet. The problem will last for maybe 20 years!

28 SWM is becoming the new hunting- ground for scams. This must stop. Waste Minimisation is being subverted. Consultants recommend and award Exorbitant Tipping- Fees instead of rewarding Waste Minimisation. Bangalore will pay Ramky Rs198 - Rs 351/ton tipping fee for 20 yrs for 400 tpd, or Rs crore a year, vs Rs 8 crore one-time capital cost of a 400 tpd compost plant. ILFS recommends Waste-To-Energy for mixed MSW despite failures and without budgeting haz-waste landfills for dioxin- containing ash from PVC-containing RDF units. It has no success story, only a rejected 42-lakh DPR for Guwahati.

29 Landfilling raw waste is against Rules, but being resorted to and recommended by consultants.

30 We need clear Policy Guidelines Consultants should not be appointed for SWM unless they have passed a brief certification course of CPCB and undertake to follow it. Agencies funding or advising SWM projects incl. JNNURM must also have personnel trained in correct SWM practices and SAARC guidelines. Do’s and Don’t’s of waste processing & disposal must be widely disseminated to all Funding Agencies, as the Rules do not seem to be explicit enough or are deliberately subverted.