In a new twist to the ongoing battle between the Thiruvananthapuram City Corporation and the Vilappil gram panchayat over municipal waste, a division bench of the Kerala High Court on February 24 suggested that the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) could be called, if required, for providing protection to the corporation’s trucks carrying garbage to its waste treatment plant in Vilappil, 15 km from the city.
| Genesis of the waste war
The corporation acquired more than 18 ha at Nedumkuzhi village under Vilappil panchayat in 1993. “The authorities never told us that the land was acquired for garbage plant,” says C Yesudas, who lives close to the plant. Local residents were made to believe that the land was for developing a flower garden, he says. “People were told the plant would function under the supervision of a team of scientists and there would not be any problem of stench or pollution,” says Beneckson.
The corporation’s plan was to convert bio-waste into organic manure. In 2000, it entered into an agreement with Poabs Group, a plantation and granite quarrying company, which had no direct experience in solid waste management. As per the agreement, the corporation would provide land and Poabs would install and operate the waste treatment facility. It was also agreed that the corporation would provide 300 tonnes of waste daily to the plant and would pay a penalty of Rs 49,995 a day if it fails to do so.
“At that time, the corporation was not even collecting 150 tonnes of waste a day. The agreement was based on wrong assessment about the quantity of waste produced,” points out K Ajayakumar Varma, scientist and former director of Suchitwa Mission, a state government initiative started in 2008 for making Kerala waste-free.
To supply the required amount of waste, the corporation started frantic collection of waste. Rag pickers and scrap collectors were kept out. “This changed the attitude of the people who used to manage their biodegradable waste at their own homes and give other waste like paper and plastics to scrap pickers,” points out Shibu K Nair, a waste expert working with Thanal, a Thiruvananthapuram-based NGO.
Initially, the waste was simply dumped in the premises. When people resisted, they were beaten up and false complaints were lodged against more than 20 people; they are still fighting the case in the court.
Later, the waste treatment plant started operating but treated only a small quantity of bio-waste. The rest remained dumped in the plant premises in the open and started rotting. The stench became unbearable. Vilappil residents say it could be smelled from a distance of three kilometers. In the absence of a scientific landfill, leachate (toxic water oozing out of waste) flowed into nearby streams that join the Meenapalli Thodu, a tributary of the Karamana river.
According to S Shobhana Kumari, president of Vilappil gram panchayat, incidents of respiratory and skin diseases, blurring of vision and swollen limbs are high among those who live close to the plant. But the the corporation authorities counter this argument by saying that the 30-odd employees who work in the plant do not have any health problems.
“Even getting suitable marriage alliance became difficult,” says Kumari Latha, a resident of the panchayat. Market value of land dropped. Many were forced to leave the place and settle somewhere else. Allegations do the rounds that the real intention of Poabs was to pull down the land value in the surrounding areas and buy them for quarrying.
However, as the agitations intensified, the corporation asked Poabs to build scientific landfills and a leachate treatment plant. Poabs refused. Instead, it demanded the corporation to compensate for violating the agreement by not providing the specified quantity of waste. The civic body formed an expert committee to look into the issue, which later found out that contrary to Poabs’s claims, the plant had a capacity of handling only 150 tonnes of waste per day in rainy season and 180 tonnes in the peak of the summer.
As a compromise agreement, the corporation bought the plant from Poabs, and in 2008, transferred the charges of operating the plant to another service provider—the Centre for Environment and Development (CED), a Thiruvananthapuram-based NGO, which is an accredited agency of the state government in solid waste management and also a consultant of the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. “After CED’s taking over the plant the situation worsened,” says Beneckson. Nothing has been done in the last three years for waste treatment or disposal, says he.
CED withdrew last month citing inordinate delay in the construction of pollution control facilities and non-payment of dues. The corporation is now constructing a leachate treatment plant, which will be completed soon, says G Happy Kumar, deputy mayor of the corporation.
“Let the corporation do whatever it wants to do. But we will see to it that no garbage truck reach the plant,” says Burhanudeen, president of VJSS. |
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A decade of struggle
Court’s stance criticised
City tries to manage its waste