Urban News

The Hindu        16.12.2010

SWM facility work may start next month

Aloysius Xavier Lopez —

A view of the Kodungaiyur dumpyard.

CHENNAI: The work on integrated solid waste management facility in Kodungaiyur is likely to start next month.

Chennai Corporation officials said that the project was in the final stages of clearance.

A team of scientists from the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) visited the site for the integrated solid waste management facility in Kodungaiyur on Wednesday. The team collected samples of groundwater. Studies on ambient air quality were also done. The team, which was on a visit pertaining to another report on the dumpyard, held discussions with the civic authorities later. The team would submit the report to the CPCB in Delhi, said officials of the civic body.

This would throw new light on the situation of the dumpyard's pollution, said officials. The team is likely to have collected inputs on concentration of pollutants and basic meteorological data. The water quality study is likely to be done pertaining to dissolved oxygen, concentration of pathogenic bacteria and behaviour of trace metals.

The integrated waste management project if cleared would involve processing of solid waste through rapid biomethanation, accelerated aerobic composting, vermicomposting, reuse of refuse-derived fuel, manufacturing brick out of debris, sanitary landfill of non-degradable waste and recycling of plastic. The project would process 1,800 metric tonnes of unsegregated solid waste that is dumped at Kodungaiyur per day.

The facility would also help in pre-sorting waste into compostable, recyclable and currently unusable categories. It would be sanitised with herbal extracts and biostabilised with enzymes. The project will help control odour, pathogens, flies and rodents and mainly get rid of polluted air in the area.

Forty acres of land will be allotted for the facility. The project is likely to help increase the life of the dump yard six-fold and improve the working conditions for the workers.

The project will be on a design, build, operate, maintain and transfer basis. The facility would be handed over to the civic body after 20 years.

The Hindu         14.12.2010

Waste management to improve

Karthik Madhavan — Photo: M. Periasamy

Litter-free:Coimbatore may soon have clean roads, as the Corporation has initiated efforts to improve waste management.

COIMBATORE: The over 90 vehicles the Coimbatore Corporation uses to transport solid waste will double their trip in a month's time.

From four trips a day a lorry, it will go up to eight. And, even as the lorries collect more waste, make more trips and, thereby, consume more fuel, the civic body will get to save Rs. 4 crore a year.

The reason behind this is that the Corporation has established four transit stations to better its solid waste management system.

Explains K. Saravanakumar, assistant executive engineer: “the lorries that carried the waste straight from the bins on roads to the Vellalore compost yard had to travel more than 20 km a day and this consumed more time”.

Cost cutting

Now, those lorries will only ferry the waste from the bins to the nearest transfer station, from where the waste will be compacted and transported to the compost yard by a private contractor. This will save time, fuel and money.

In association with the contractor, Coimbatore Integrated Waste Management Private Limited, the Corporation has established the transit stations at Peelamedu, Ukkadam, alongside Sathyamangalam Road and is in the process of constructing one at Ondipudur.

Once the four stations are fully operational, the waste collection will go up. The expenditure on fuel will also come down and help the civic body save Rs. 4 crore, says Commissioner Anshul Mishra.

Garbage, collected door-to-door by conservancy workers, will be dumped in bins, from which the lorries will take it to the stations.

The reduction in travel will increase the collection to about 95 per cent, says A. Lakshmanan, Project Director, Solid Waste Management. At present, the civic body gathers around 600 tonnes of waste a day.

To augment the waste collection efforts, the Corporation has bought 11 refuse collector compactors (lorries) and 500 bins of 600 litre each.

Mr. Mishra says efforts are also on to distribute two lakh more waste baskets to houses within city limits. Already 2.29 lakh have been given.

The waste thus collected will be taken to the Vellalore dump yard, where the company will segregate and process the waste. The non-biodegradables will be used as landfill at the site there.

The landfill process is expected to begin early next year and will go on for 20 years – till the end of the contract between the civic body and the company.