Thiruvananthapuram, the capital city of Kerala, does not have a municipal waste-treatment facility. Its only plant to treat solid waste, located in the nearby Vilappil gram panchayat, was closed in December
Thiruvananthapuram, the capital city of Kerala, does not have a municipal waste-treatment facility. Its only plant to treat solid waste, located in the nearby Vilappil gram panchayat, was closed in December 2011 in the wake of protests by people living in the vicinity. The city corporation is now burying and burning unsegregated waste, flouting the Municipal Solid Waste (Management and Handling) Rules, 2000, or MSW Rules. K Sajeevan, chairperson of the Kerala State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB), talks to M Suchitra about the challenge of waste management in the city
The city mayor, K Chandrika, confessed to Down To Earth in July this year that the Thiruvananthapuram Municipal Corporation is flouting rules by allowing the burying and burning of unsegregated waste, prohibited under the MSW Rules. She also said this is contaminating water bodies and groundwater.
Yes. What the corporation is doing is illegal and dangerous. Most of the water bodies in and around the city are getting polluted. When unsegregated waste is buried in deep pits, it contaminates the groundwater too. The burning of unsegregated solid waste also generates toxic gases. Despite these dangers, solid waste has been used as filling material for building two railway platforms in the city. This has been done with permission from the Indian Railways.
But checking pollution is the responsibility of the state’s Pollution Control Board (PCB). Does the board take matters related to municipal waste seriously?
Yes, we do. The board has been asking the corporation to comply with the MSW Rules. Waste disposal is the responsibility of local bodies.
The Thiruvananthapuram Corporation says the only solution to the problem of garbage disposal in the city is to reopen the Vilappil plant.
But that’s not possible. The people in the vicinity will not allow it. They say the plant had made their lives hell. The corporation set up its waste-composting plant in 2000 on 18 hectares of land it had bought in 1993 from Vilappil residents. The plant lacked scientific facilities to treat leachate (water oozing out of decayed waste) and scientific landfills to bury the rejects (material that cannot be composted). Besides, the capacity of the plant was to process around 90 tonnes of garbage in a day, while the city produced about 300 tonnes in a day. Unsegregated, decayed garbage heaped at the plant site contaminated the streams and other sources of drinking water of the nearby villages. People say the pollution caused respiratory and skin diseases, among other health problems.
Did the PCB ever serve the Vilappil plant a closure notice from its inception in 2000 till its shutdown in 2011?
We did not. Closure of the plant was not a solution to the garbage problem. The MSW Rules make it mandatory for all local bodies to have a centralised waste-treatment plant. Giving orders for shutting down the plant would have only added to waste accumulation in the city. Instead, we had asked the corporation to install proper facilities at the plant within a time frame so that it could function in a scientific way. But the corporation failed.
After the closure of the plant, didn’t many people in the city resort to simple composting techniques?
They did, 