Urban News

The Hindu 31.12.2009

Surampatty Municipality suffers without garbage disposal yard

Staff Reporter

ERODE: Surampatty Municipality, a grade three civic body, has been dumping garbage all around - on road sides, vacant plots and almost at any place that is far from human habitation.

The reason: it doesn’t have a proper garbage disposal yard and mechanism in place.

The two metric tonnes of biodegradable and non-biodegradable waste it collects is just collected and dumped.

For the purpose of dumping waste, without proper treatment, it employs 50 containers, two tractors and as many lorries and five tricycles.

And, such dumping has landed the civic body, which has a population of about 55,000, in trouble.

Residents of the area where it dumps garbage complain of pollution.

Ward 1 Councillor of neighbouring Kasipalayam Municipality P. Krishnaveni says the garbage the Surampatty civic body dumps in Kasipalayam village affects about 2,500 families.

The smoke from the burning garbage troubles the students of the nearby government middle school, some of who have fainted and felt nausea, she says.

She regrets that the problem has been going on for the past 15 years and the dumped garbage resembles a hillock in the Bharathipuram area. Surampatty officials say the reason the civic body has been dumping all over is because they don’t have a land to dispose of the garbage in a safe and proper manner.

“No land is available within the Municipality limits to set up a garbage disposal yard. And, the lands the Municipality identified for the purpose have not been put to use because of opposition from the public of the area,” says Executive Officer G. Maryammal.

The civic body first identified a land in Muthampalayam and then in Mettunasuvanpalayam, near Bhavani. After failing in the attempts, the civic body took up the issue with the District Collector and Municipal Administration Department.

Letter

Municipality Chairman V.S. Loganathan says the civic body wrote to the Commissioner of Municipal Administration asking for help to safely dispose of the garbage and the latter wrote to the Commissioner of Erode Corporation to accommodate Surampatty’s garbage.

The CMA wrote a letter to the Corporation in February this year and followed it up with another in September following a court order but the Corporation has not helped, he says.

“It (Erode Corporation) has not come forward to help Surampatty Municipality, which will soon become a part of the former,” he says and accuses it of violating orders.

Erode Corporation on its part says when it is finding it difficult to manage its own garbage it will only be a burden to take waste from Surampatty.

Left with no option, Surampatty Municipality officials say they have again written to CMA for further orders and have also sought the help of District Collector.

The Hindu 31.12.2009

Waste from three municipalities to be disposed of at Vellalore yard

Special Correspondent

Photo: K.Ananthan

COMMON GROUND: Municipalities near the city plan to dispose of waste at the Coimbatore Corporation’s compost yard at Vellalore. —

COIMBATORE: Scarcity of land for the disposal of garbage in their areas has prompted the municipalities located on the city’s border to join the Coimbatore Corporation in its Integrated Solid Waste Management Programme.

Through a resolution passed at its Council meeting on Tuesday, the Corporation decided to allow the municipalities of Kurichi, Kuniamuthur and Kavundampalayam to dump the waste at the Vellalore yard when facilities for landfill and composting of waste would be completed.

The Corporation is implementing the scheme at Rs.96 crore under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission.

It has already put its sanitary workers and inspectors through a training programme on door-to-door collection and other aspects of primary collection such as segregation of waste at source. Those trained are also educating the public on segregation.

While the Corporation is into this task on its territory, the municipalities have already begun door-to-door collection in many of their wards, but they collect non-segregated waste.

Now, they intend to use the Corporation’s composting and landfill facilities that are being established at its compost yard at Vellalore.

Official sources said on Wednesday that the municipalities could bring non-segregated waste now.

But, they would have to implement segregation of waste (storing biodegradable and non-biodegradable garbage in separate bins) in their areas as only segregated waste could be brought to the yard after the Corporation’s facilities were commissioned.

Through a process of scientific closure, the Corporation was already into disposing of tonnes of waste accumulated at the yard over many years.

The non-segregated waste from the municipalities would be disposed of along with this for the time being, the sources said.

Once the new facilities are in place, fresh waste, including those from the municipalities, will be disposed of every day.

The Corporation placed in its Council on Tuesday a resolution on accepting at the yard the waste from Kavundampalayam Municipality on the city’s north-west border and Kurichi and Kuniamuthur Municipalities on the southern border.

These municipalities have seen a sharp rise in the number of housing colonies over the last few years and are struggling to dispose of the waste generated in these areas.

These municipalities adopted resolutions at their Council meetings to request the Corporation for sanction to send the waste to the yard at Vellalore.