The Hindu              22.05.2013

Panel set up to locate land for dumping sites

Delhi High Court to take up the matter for further hearing on July 5.

Pulling up the Delhi Development Authority for not
meeting the Supreme Court deadline for making available landfill sites
within three months of the order to the three Municipal Corporations of
Delhi, the Delhi High Court on Tuesday formed a multi-member committee
for identifying land and transferring them to the civic bodies for new
garbage dumping sites.

The committee will be headed
by the Principal Secretary, Urban Development Department of the Delhi
Government, and the DDA Vice-Chairman, a representative of the Land and
Building Department of the Delhi Government and the three Municipal
Commissioners will be its members.

The Court will take up the matter for further hearing on July 5.

The
three municipal corporations for the moment have demanded 600 acres for
new garbage dumping sites. Counsel for the three municipal bodies,
Sumeet Pushkarna, submitted before the Court that as of now around 50
per cent of the garbage generated in the Capital every day was being
processed.

He further submitted that there will come a
time when the civic bodies would not require very many landfill sites
for dumping garbage as there were plans to send most of the garbage to
processing plants. He said only the inert garbage would be dumped in
landfill sites close to densely populated areas.

According
to Mr. Pushkarna, the DDA has so far made available only 150 acres to
the civic bodies for new landfill sites while the Delhi Master Plan-2021
provides for 1,500 acres for it.

The Supreme Court
had in 2010 directed the DDA to make land available to the local bodies
within three months so that they could shift dumping of garbage from the
existing saturated landfill sites.

In March this
year, the civic bodies had informed the Court that the situation had
reached such a point that with each passing day they were finding it
increasingly difficult to operate the present landfill sites. However,
they said, since there was no other option, they had been forced to
continue to use these sites.

The Delhi Pollution
Control Committee has already banned dumping of garbage at three of the
four existing dumping sites. But the three municipal bodies continue to
dump garbage at the Bhalaswa, Ghazipur, Okhla and Narela-Bawana sites.