Dhapa dumping ground ceases to exist

KOLKATA: It’s a place that is 70 feet above ground level. Several groups of rag-pickers are seen busy collecting plastic materials from heaps of garbage being transported every now and then by trucks. Bulldozers are at work after these trucks and the new garbage compactor machines unload tonnes of wastes at a go. It is also a perfect grazing field for cows.Come home to Dhapa dumping ground, the city’s only waste dumping A recent survey by a team of Kolkata Municipal Corporation and experts revealed that Dhapa dumping ground can no longer take the burden of city’s 4000 tonnes of garbage produced every day which is transported to the dumping ground through 500 trucks and recently introduced garbage compactor machines.
A journey to the dumping ground by a TOI team was not without scare. The road that leads to the hillock shaped dumping ground is 3km away from Eastern Metropolitan Bypass. The 1.5 km road that connects the plain land at Dhapa check post to the garbage hillock is not only uneven, but mostly broken. After a tumultuous car ride reached us the waste hillock, we saw scores of rag pickers at work to segregate plastics from heaps of other forms of wastes deposited there for years. Large chunks of garbage are spilling over from two hillocks to the adjoining vegetables field and a waterbody, half of which has been filled with large chunks of garbage.
“Dhapa dumping ground spread over 60 acres of land and started operations in 1987 has long outlived its utility. It was built with the capacity to accommodate city’s wastes for 15 years. We need an immediate replacement for the present dumping ground,” said an engineer of the Dhapa dumping ground who has been looking after the wasteland for several years. In fact, after a West Bengal Pollution Control Board (WBPCB) forced the Kolkata Municipal Corporation authorities to allow deposition of garbage in one of the three dumping sites within Dhapa some eight years ago, the civic body made a frantic search for an alternative ground for city’s rapidly increasing wastes. The KMC acquired a 30 acre but could not proceed with building a second dumping ground as the lad in question falls under Ramsar site where any types of construction activities is banned under an international convention.
The capacity of the Dhapa dumping ground could have been enhanced, had a waste to energy plant set up within the ground complex in 2003 survived. The plant was set up to produce fertilizer from the wastes.. However, later the private firm which had set up the plant had to close the factory because of non-availability of vegetable wastes which are needed in bulk to produce fertilizer. “The plan could not succeed for our wastes are not segregated at source,” explained a KMC official.
Having failed to get a new dumping ground within the Dhapa complex, the civic officials started a fresh hunt for land across the city. They searched for it at Joka and Maheshtala but could not succeed. Finally, hunt ended beyond the KMC jurisdiction when the KMC finalized the deal for a 9 acre land at Rajarhat. But, according to a KMC solid waste management department official the land is too meagre for building a dumping ground to cater to wastes of Kolkata. “At best we can create a temporary provision for depositing city’s wastes at the newly built dumping ground for next two years. After that with no other land at sight, we will be landed in real trouble,” the KMC engineer conceded.
Mayor Sovan Chatterjee, however, is hopeful that the civic body finally find a land that will solve the crisis. “We are in the process of searching a big chunk of land that will be sufficient for building a new garbage dumping ground for the city,” the mayor said.