While the year 2013 bids adieu, stocktaking throws up the same old
stinking stories of the previous year with a few new additions.

The
month of January 2013 opened with the City Corporation launching a new
weapon from its arsenal to beat the ‘plastic monster.’ Mayor K Chandrika
and team, irrespective of party and politics, unleashed a blitzkrieg in
markets and shopping centres alike, seizing bulks of plastic carrybags
to be transported away. The campaign brought about a sea change, with a
lion’s share of vendors in the city switching to cloth bags. But it did
not take much time for the initiative to sing the swan song. The
campaign ended and things are now back to square one.

Giving new
promises to tackle solid waste, as Vilappilsala gates remained padlocked
for the second consecutive year, the government offered to set up
decentralised waste treatment plants in the city. In place of the sole
waste plant at Vilappilsala, four plants were announced, in every
Assembly constituency in the city – Nemom, Vattiyoorkavu, Chalai and
Kazhakkoottam.

Meetings were convened by Ministers in the presence
of MLAs and representatives of local people and though the concern
‘’Not in My Backyard’’ was aired by many, the Ministers promised that
the plants would come up. Now, when the year is coming to a close, this
decentralised waste management move tops the list of non-starters.

The
‘much-promising’ mobile incinerator that came all the way from Gujarat
said goodbye to the city in 2013. It ended up being a fuel-guzzling
machine burning a hole in the pocket of the civic body. For months, it
lay idle near the World Market at Anayara and the City Corporation that
offered a red carpet welcome to the machine symbolically wrote its elegy
also by placing wreaths on it.

The mobile incinerator was later rolled to Malappuram.

Taking
a cue from the ‘successful’ landfilling done at Murukkumpuzha by
constructing a railway platform, the Corporation tried to repeat the act
at Chirayinkeezhu with people’s support.

However, the ground
water pollution at Murukkumpuzha allegedly caused by the leakage from
the garbage landfill brought the garbage transportation to
Chirayinkeezhu to a standstill.

The hopes of setting up a waste
treatment at Chalai ended when the government pleader told the High
Court that the government did not wish to proceed with the plan further.
The City Corporation’s announcement of setting up biogas plants and
windrow composts in select locations also remains on paper.