BMC asked for report on waste treatment

Cuttack: The National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Friday directed the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) to file within four weeks an affidavit explaining how it plans to treat not only legacy waste but also fresh waste being generated to ensure that there is no accumulation of legacy waste in future.
The NGT’s east zone bench in Kolkata issued the direction after taking on record the inspection report filed with the affidavit of the State Pollution Control Board (SPCB) that indicated that there was a daily shortfall of 290 tonnes in the collection of municipal waste in addition to the 3,405 tonnes of accumulated legacy waste.

On March 31, the NGT had taken cognizance of a TOI report highlighting the stench emanating out of a garbage dump managed by BMC at the temporary transit station (TTS) near Sainik School in the state capital, and formed a committee to conduct an inquiry and submit a report. The committee’s inspection report was submitted, along with an affidavit filed on March 30.
The report mentioned that the current potential generation of municipal solid waste in 67 wards of BMC is approximately 800 tonnes per day. However, legacy waste of 3,405 tonnes are yet to be processed simultaneously with daily collected waste of 510 TPD, the report said.
Taking note of it, B Amit Sthalekar (judicial member) and Arun Kumar Verma (expert member) questioned, “If the daily waste is 510 tonnes/day, there would be still shortfall of 290 tonnes per/day as per the daily generation of 800 tonnes per/day of municipal waste, which is not accounted for by the BMC. Question is as to how does the corporation plans to treat this waste which in future will accumulate and become legacy waste?”
The bench further questioned, “The report does not contain any explanation with regard to the remaining 290 metric tonnes of untreated municipal solid waste. The daily waste generated is also not expected to remain static at 800 tonnes in future and is bound to increase. What is the plan for disposal of anticipated increased municipal waste?”
The bench posted the matter to May 28.