Residents living around waste processing plants who have been demanding their closure for years now may heave a sigh of relief. Deputy Chief Minister and Bengaluru Development Minister D.K. Shivakumar on Tuesday announced that the State government will relocate all waste processing plants and landfills to outside Bengaluru city soon.
“Citizens living around processing units and landfills are facing several problems. Hence, I have decided to shift these units to uninhabited hilly areas around the city,” he said.
On Tuesday, he held a meeting of Revenue and Forest officials, including Minister for Forest, Ecology, and Environment Eshwar Khandre. Mr. Shivakumar directed Deputy Commissioners of Bengaluru (Urban), Bengaluru (Rural), and Ramanagara districts to find land parcels of 100 acres each in four places, in four directions from the city, to establish Integrated Solid Waste Management Parks, to where all waste management of the city will shift to and all processing plants and landfills in the city will shut down.
The Integrated SWM parks will have composting units, dry waste aggregation centres, landfill for inert and rejects, generation of refuse-derived fuel, and waste energy plants.
During earlier tenure
It can be recalled that there was a proposal to build similar SWM parks in Madhugiri and even take the waste to Kolar Gold Fields during the earlier tenure of the Congress government (2013-18). However, these proposals had met with intense opposition from SWM activists who have been batting for decentralised waste processing.
Ironically, it was the earlier Congress government that built five waste processing plants in 2013-14, in less than six months, hailed as a paradigm shift in SWM in the city. Following a satyagraha by freedom fighter H.S. Doreswamy demanding a stop to dumping the city’s waste at Mandur, then Chief Minister Siddaramaiah assured him that dumping at Mandur would stop by December 31, 2013. By then the Karnataka High Court had made segregation of waste mandatory. The city’s civic body built waste processing plants in Seegehalli, Kannahalli, Doddabidarakallu, Chikkanagamangala, and Subbarayanapalya.
Finding land
On Tuesday, Mr. Shivakumar also asked the Forest Department to find land adjacent to forest land or deemed forest to handover the same to the Revenue Department for the project. According to an official present at the meeting, the possibility of providing land to the Forest Department in exchange for land for park was also discussed. At present, all landfills and waste processing units are functioning.
A senior official said it may take at least three years to complete the process of establishing these parks and till then the existing plants will continue to operate.
