At a time when citizens and experts in Bengaluru have been demanding the closure of waste processing plants and landfills, the State government has decided to carry the heaps of refuse to Ramanagara, besides Bengaluru Urban and Bengaluru Rural districts.
Sources in Ramanagara say a park will likely be set up at Bidadi, located about 32 km from Bengaluru. This comes even as there has been fierce opposition from the locals to the existing landfills and waste processing plants.
100-acre land
Ramanagara Deputy Commissioner Avinash Menon Rajendran confirmed to The Hindu that there are lands available in the district, and the district administration has started looking for 100 acres of land. Bengaluru Urban DC Dayananda K.A. said he had directed officials to find land, while the office of the Bengaluru Rural DC said they are doing the same.
Deputy Chief Minister and Bengaluru Development Minister, D.K. Shivakumar, in a meeting held on October 10, announced that all waste processing units and landfills would be shifted out of the city as people living in the vicinity of these landfills were finding it hard to live there. He directed DCs of Ramanagara, Bengaluru Urban, and Bengaluru Rural to find 100-acre parcels of land for the purpose.
On his directions, the Bengaluru Solid Waste Management Limited will set up four integrated solid waste management plants on lands given to them by the Revenue Department. An official in the BSWML said if a plant were to be set up in Ramanagara, they would have to transport a portion of the city’s waste to the neighbouring district. The integrated plants will have composting units, dry waste aggregation centres, landfills for rejects, generation of refuse-derived fuel and waste-to-energy plants.
Wrong move
However, Sandhya Narayan, a solid waste management expert, said this was a wrong move by the government as it reverses everything done to manage the city’s waste.
“Bengaluru’s waste should be processed within the city, and there are advanced technologies for the same. The contractors may love this new idea as it involves long transportation to Ramanagara and other places on the outskirts. Ideally, at every ward, there should be small processing plants, and waste should not go out of the city. But at present, there are plants in the city, and BSWML has to work to stop the odour emanating from the plant. Waste processing should decentralised. With the fresh move, it will again become centralised,” she said.
