The Hindu 10.02.2010
House panel visits garbage plant
Special Correspondent
— Photo: C. Ratheesh Kumar
Taking stock: Members of the Legislative Committee on Local Fund and Accounts visiting the garbage treatment plant at Vilappilsala in Thiruvananthapuram on Tuesday.
Thiruvananthapuram: The city Corporation is preparing to launch a campaign to sensitise the public about the need for segregation of garbage at source. Corporation Health Officer D. Sreekumar told a Legislative Committee on Local Fund and Accounts that the campaign would be launched next month.
Committee members, including chairman N. Anirudhan and members K.K. Divakaran, P.T.A. Rahim, M.J. Jacob and V. Sivankutty, were on a visit to the Corporation’s garbage treatment plant at Vilappilsala in the suburbs on Tuesday to assess its functioning, following a reference made in the audit report on a Rs.40 lakh grant-in-aid availed of by the former operators of the plant.
Highlighting the capacity constraints of the plant, Dr. Sreekumar said the overloading of garbage bays was responsible for the stench. He said once the airtight garbage trucks arrived, smell during transportation of the garbage from the city to Vilappilsala would be avoided. He said the Corporation had applied for assistance from the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) to set up a Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) plant on the premises. The plant, he explained, would make fuel bricks out of slow composting materials like palm fronds. The bricks would be used as fuel in cement plants.
The committee proposed the application of biological inoculums at garbage collection points to suppress the smell. Vilappil gram panchayat member B. Radhakrishnan who was present, said the leachate from the garbage plant was polluting the water sources in the neighbourhood even after the modernisation works taken up by the Corporation after the exit of the Poabs Group, the former operators. He said the plant was a health hazard to the residents in the Vilappil panchayat.
Mayor C. Jayan Babu said the Corporation was focussing on a decentralised system of solid waste management to minimise the quantum of garbage being transported to the plant. He said an amount of Rs.40 crore had been spent on modernising the compost plant at Vilappil. A leachate treatment unit would become operational in six months, he said.
