Waste discarded on roads, vacant plots, an eyesore for realty hotspot Mohali

Mohali may be emerging as the new realty hotspot, with swanky apartment buildings and luxury housing societies cropping up at every nook and corner, but it is yet to put in place a proper waste collection system. The result: Garbage is discarded on vacant plots and sites, marring the beauty of the city.

Municipal corporation (MC) authorities claim that the Greater Mohali Area Development Authority (GMADA) doesn’t have a dumping site of its own so the waste generated at its newly developed societies, including Aerocity, New Chandigarh, TDI City, etc, are dumped on roads and plots falling within civic body limits.

MC officials say that neither is the GMADA handing over jurisdiction of these societies to them nor is it following a proper mechanism to dispose of the waste. The civic body officials had raised the issue at a recent meeting with housing and urban development minister Aman Arora.

A senior GMADA official said, “We have formed resource management centres (RMC) in new urban estates, which are yet to be handed over to the MC. We are planning to form more combined segregation points where garbage of three or more sectors can be dumped. Besides, we are also looking to construct dumping points at the site itself while planning new projects.”

The officer added that once the sectors are fully developed, these will be handed over to the MC.

Commenting on the issue, GMADA chief administrator Amandeep Bansal said, “If GMADA is to pay any charges for waste management, we are ready to do so.”

Waste management

Mohali generates 100 metric tonnes (MT) of solid waste daily, including 40 MT of wet and 60 MT mixed waste. An MC official said, “While dry waste, including plastic items, is recycled, the wet waste is turned into compost. There are 14 resource management centres across the city where the waste is segregated for processing.”

Legacy waste, a challenge

The Phase 8 garbage dump site has a total of 3.30 lakh cubic metre legacy waste.

“The legacy waste includes garbage dumped for over ten years. We got two trammel machines, which can process 30 tonnes of garbage every hour, around seven months ago and are processing the legacy waste,” shared an officer.

Through bioremediation, the legacy waste is turned into bio-soil, compost, refused derived fuel (RDF), construction and demolition waste etc. While the bio soil is used to elevate the low-lying areas under MC’s jurisdiction, the compost is used in parks. The RDF/plastic waste generated after processing legacy waste is supplied to private firms to be used as fuel in energy plants.

The C&D waste is sent to Sector 57 for reuse.