Delhi’s landfills will take 197 years to clear at current pace: Data

Delhi is sitting on 27.6 million tonnes of waste across three landfills, a marginal decline from the 28 million 34 months ago, when it embarked on an ambitious ₹250 crore programme to clear the landfills — a statistic that raises questions about the Municipal Corporation of Delhi’s (MCD) ability to complete the task in the next 16 months, the latest deadline set by new lieutenant governor (LG) VK Saxena.

On average, 5,315 tonnes of garbage has been cleared every day in the past 34 months (1.94 million tonnes a year; the number is based on the average rate of work). Accounting for the net addition (4,931 tonnes of garbage is added every day to the landfills, or 1.8 million tonnes a year), it would take 197 years to clear them fully.

In total, some 5.5 million tonnes of legacy waste has been cleared from three landfills — an erroneous term for the dumps at Okhla, Bhalswa and Ghazipur, because they have become garbage mountains — in the 34-month period, but 5.1 million tonnes of new waste has been added. If the aim is to clear the mountain of “legacy waste” alone, ignoring the mountain of new waste, it would still take 14 years.

Meanwhile, the cost of the project has now soared to ₹1,864 crore, according to an official estimate submitted by the MCD to the Union ministry of housing and urban affairs.

A senior MCD official said that there are several variables, and processing levels go down during the three monsoon months when garbage gets wet and the fresh waste dumping at Ghazipur was double during the first six months of this year when its waste to energy plant was shut for maintenance repair work.

According to estimates submitted to the Centre, the largest of the three sites, East Delhi’s Ghazipur, which holds more waste than the other two combined, has seen only 8% progress — and that too when only legacy waste is taken into account. The first quarterly monitoring report by Delhi Pollution Control Committee states that Ghazipur, which had 14 million tonnes of accumulated waste in July, 2019, landfill has 15 million tonnes on March 31 this year.

The MCD said that in order to tackle fresh waste dumping, the corporation is seeking to expand the capacity of waste to energy plants.

“One waste to energy plant at Tehkhand with 2000 TPD (tonnes per day) capacity is likely to be commissioned by September 2022. We are also enhancing the capacity of existing plant at Okhla by 1,000 TPD for which the process has been started . And bids have been invited for a new plant at Narela Bawana which will have a capacity of 3,000 TPD. These projects will help in stopping fresh waste from reaching the landfill site and greatly enhance the net waste removal rate,” an MCD spokesperson said.

Despite repeated attempts, the LG office did not comment on the matter.

The original order issued by the National Green Tribunal in July 2019 stated that legacy waste dumps are to be “cleared within one year but substantial progress must be made and demonstrated within six months”, but there have been multiple revisions and extensions of these deadlines.

On December 22, 2020, the three corporations informed the state-level monitoring committee, which is headed by the chief secretary, that 50% of the legacy waste dumped at three landfills will be cleared by March 2021 and that they will be flattened by June 2022. In February 2021, the corporations issued fresh deadlines and said that Bhalswa will be cleared by June 2022, Okhla, by March 2023 and Ghazipur by December 2023.

However, in March this year, the MCD told the ministry of housing and urban affairs that the Bhlaswa and Okhla sites are to be cleared by July and October 2023 respectively, while the one at Ghazipur will be flattened by December 2024.

As things stand, these estimates seem improbable, if not impossible.

The latest August status report from the corporation states that 7.8% of original legacy waste has been cleared at Ghazipur, 30% at Okhla, and 31.8% at Bhalswa– cumulatively amounting to 5.5 million tons against the original target of 28 million tons. But 1.3 million tonnes of fresh garbage has been added at the first, 1.6 million at the second, and 2.2 million tonnesat the third — also highlighting that progress should perhaps be measured in treatment of all waste, not split between “legacy waste” and “new waste”.

The Swachh Bharat Mission – Urban 2.0 specifically speaks of dump sites. While launching the second phase of programme on January 10, Prime Minister Narendra Modi stressed the importance of wiping out “mountains of garbage” from India cities by processing legacy waste. He referred to the Ghazipur landfill.

Out of the total 11,120 tonnes of waste generated by the city, the corporation dumps 5,100-5,600 tonnes in the three landfill sites according to MCD data. Even at the lower end 5000 tons a day, Delhi dumps over 1.8 million tonnes of new garbage. Data from MCD shows that so far it has been able to achieve an average clearing rate of 1.94 million tonnes garbage per year with 5.5 million tonnes of garbage removed over a period of 34 months. As per official data submitted to MoHUA, every day Ghazipur receives 1,300 tonnes of garbage, Okhla 1,600 tonnes, and Bhalswa 2,200-2,500 tonnes.

Atin Biswas, a waste management expert and programme director of municipal solid waste sector in the Centre for Science and Environment said that wet waste is difficult to biomine, and hence only 8-9 months of the year should be considered for predicting timelines. “Realistically speaking, Delhi has failed to meet previous deadlines and there is no reason to believe that new deadlines will be met. Even if trommels are installed, corporation has to figure out destination for various fractions like inerts derived at the end of the process,” Biswas said. A trommel is essentially a mechanical screen or a sieve used to separate various kinds of waste.

Biomining separates various components of legacy waste such as plastic, paper, cloth, sand, bricks by passing them through a trommel .

Biswas said that unless the underlying problem of culture of dumping fresh waste is removed, the project will continue to face trouble. “Even if you remove entire mountain of waste, they will be standing before a fresh waste mountain. SBM 2.0 mandate says 80% of waste has to be prevented from reaching the landfill and rest 20% should not be anything other inert material etc. Unless we remove food waste from this cycle which is 60% of net quantity no significant progress can be made.”

MCD has now decided to make one contractor responsible for removing at least 3 million tonnes of waste from each of the three site. A senior official from the sanitation department overseeing the project said that the corporation will be awarding composite contracts of biomining work at each of the three landfill sites.

“Instead of a piecemeal approach with several smaller players carrying out independent work, now we will be moving to a more comprehensive coordinated effort. Tenders have been be issued to hire contractor for removal of 3 million tonnes of legacy waste from the Ghazipur, Okhla and Bhalswa landfill. it is expected that the new approach will increase the processing speed,” this person added.

A third MCD official said that reducing fresh waste is a function of new waste to energy sites coming up in the city. “Bids have been invited for setting up a new plant at Narela Bawana while the process has been initiated to increase the capacity of Okhla plant.”