This presentation is about Remediating Open Dumps and Recycling of spaces. Website: www.almitrapatel.com YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4i4LO4B8EBGhAjWSefv2GQ

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Remediating Open Dumps
and
Recycling of Spaces
Mrs Almitra H Patel
Member, Supreme Court Committee for Solid
Waste Management
almitrapatel@rediffmail.com
14.2.2007

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OPEN WASTE DUMPS ARE
NOT BEING IMPROVED.
This FIRST deadline set by the Municipal Solid
Waste [MSW] Rules 2000, is the least followed :
“Improvement of Existing Landfill sites as per
provisions of these rules, By 31.3.2001 or earlier.”
Perhaps for want of clear directives on how to
manage the huge variety of open dumps we have.
But there are do-able solutions for all of them.

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Dumping along highways is the
commonest, hard to handle
in-situ, but easiest to STOP

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Hill town chutes send waste out of
sight into lovely valleys. 1-week bio-
stabilised fresh waste can cover &
heal these scars with new growth.

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Dehradun buries its raw waste in
trenches in a seasonal riverbed, hard
to treat there. It can be bio-stabilised
above-ground in windrows instead.

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Many dumps are small. Keep out
leachate-producing rainwater by shaping
into convex heaps, with diversion drain
uphill and catch-drain on lower slope

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Add soil cover to control smoke &
fires, and seed with local plants to
help convert methane to CO2

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Lucknow’s dumping into the Gomti
river-bed is most shocking, but can
be bio-remediated if the will is there

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Major garbage hills like Pune’s
create leachate-pools below…

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… which seriously pollute open wells
upto 4 km away, v difficult to restore.

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This destroys nearby farmland and
provoked local litigation at Hyd too

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But even vast burning dumps like
Hyderabad’s Autonagar are being
bio-remediated. Pune is next.

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Both Hyd & Pune will run on sales
of compost to nearby farmers with
NO Payment To / From the bio-
miner. Only a 5-yr contract is reqd.

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Instead of wasting water, fuel, skilled
firemen for fire control, cities can spend
for bio-culture & JCBs to bio-stabilise
incoming waste as per MSW Rules.

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Mumbai’s Gorai dump improve-
ment in 2004 is a proven success.

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Bio-mining cleared 1 hectare of a 9-
meter high hill of 4-yr old garbage
down to ground level in 3 months
New land was made available for waste
disposal at a cost of just Rs 9/sft (vs.
Rs 600/sft for next-door real estate).
Waste volumes reduced by 35%, recyclables
were recovered. Compost made available
for Mumbai’s Horticulture Dept was not
used for long because of corruption in Dept
for purchase of red earth and manure.

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Bio-mining needs very simple eqpt
Compacted old waste was loosened and
scraped off in layers by a tractor-harrow,
then sprayed with composting bio-culture
from a tanker-truck with high-pressure pump,
formed into windrows & turned weekly by JCB.
Odor-control sanitisers were also sprayed at
Gorai where high-rise apts came up nearby.

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Tractor-harrows are best for
loosening the waste, which its dozer
blade then forms into windrows.

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Composting bio-culture is mixed in
large sintex tanks, then pumped
into portable tankers for spraying.

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Leachate can also be pumped onto
heaps and acts as good bio-culture

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Heaps are turned as for aerobic
composting of fresh waste. The SAME
HEAT is generated in old waste!

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At each turning, hired rag-pickers
retrieve buried recyclables, which
partly cover their labour cost.

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After 3-4 weekly turnings, the
waste is dry, volume-reduced &
ready to sieve by either manual or
motorised simple portable sieves.

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Gorai’s compost was left for BMP’s use
as they’d paid for expt. Gorai’s full 15
ha. can be levelled by bio-mining for
recreational land use, and its compost
used on-site for landscaping

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About 15-20% rejects remain after old
biomining, mostly inerts. This is Nasik’s
“engineered landfill” for its similar
compost rejects from new waste.

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Successful bioremediation is being
sabotaged by greed and politics.
Gorai dump is to be closed after WP 489/04
in the Mumbai High Court.
Instead of bio-mining and levelling it at a cost
of Rs 1.5 crores, BMP appointed ILFS as
consultant for Rs 1.75 crore fee. They
recommend “capping” for landfill-gas
capture at a cost of Rs 40 crore to BMP.
Bio-mining PREVENTS methane generation!

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Capping must NEVER be done for
landfill-gas capture on dumps with
no bottom and side liners in place.
Gases will simply leak out through the soil.
After capping at Malad on which the huge
MindSpace IT Complex was built, landfill
gases are ruining their IT hardware and
causing serious technical problems,
though no human morbidity is noticed yet.
The problem will last for maybe 20 years!

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SWM is becoming the new hunting-
ground for scams. This must stop.
Waste Minimisation is being subverted.
Consultants recommend and award Exorbitant Tipping-
Fees instead of rewarding Waste Minimisation.
Bangalore will pay Ramky Rs198 - Rs 351/ton tipping fee
for 20 yrs for 400 tpd, or Rs 2.85 - 5.05 crore a year, vs
Rs 8 crore one-time capital cost of a 400 tpd compost plant.
ILFS recommends Waste-To-Energy for mixed MSW despite
failures and without budgeting haz-waste landfills for dioxin-
containing ash from PVC-containing RDF units. It has no
success story, only a rejected 42-lakh DPR for Guwahati.

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Landfilling raw waste is against
Rules, but being resorted to and
recommended by consultants.

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We need clear Policy Guidelines
Consultants should not be appointed for SWM
unless they have passed a brief certification
course of CPCB and undertake to follow it.
Agencies funding or advising SWM projects incl.
JNNURM must also have personnel trained in
correct SWM practices and SAARC guidelines.
Do’s and Don’t’s of waste processing & disposal
must be widely disseminated to all Funding
Agencies, as the Rules do not seem to be
explicit enough or are deliberately subverted.