'No new landfill sites coming up in Delhi': MCD over Arvind Kejriwal’s claims

The MCD has cleared in a statement that it is not planning to develop any new landfill sites in the national capital. This came after the Chief Minister of Delhi claimed that the civic body is planning to develop 16 more sites.

Image Credit: ANI

New Delhi: A day after Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal claimed that the civic body was planning to develop 16 more landfill sites, the MCD on Friday said there was no such plan. It also said that 77 lakh metric tons of legacy waste have been processed so far from the city's three landfills, which have assumed the size of small mountains over the years. Addressing a press conference on Friday, MCD Director (Press and Information), Amit Kumar said that the information that the municipality is planning to create 16 more big dump sites or landfill was wrong. "This is baseless. There is no such move or plan to open 16 new landfill sites in the city," Kumar said. Kejriwal had on Thursday claimed that the MCD was planning to erect 16 new ‘garbage mountains’ in Delhi. He had also accused the BJP of failing to clear the three garbage mountains in the last 15 years of its rule in Delhi's three erstwhile municipal corporations, adding that the upcoming MCD polls will be fought solely on the issue of garbage. Delhi generates around 11,000 metric tons of garbage, a significant part of which is dumped in the three landfill sites -- Ghazipur, Bhalswa, and Okhla.

Giving an account of efforts being made to flatten the three garbage mountains, Kumar said that the civic body has so far cleared around 77 lakh metric tons of "legacy" waste from these landfills. Nearly 46 trommel machines have been engaged at the three landfill sites to process legacy waste. The cumulative capacity of waste processing in the city at present is 8,213 tons per day.

He also said that after the inauguration of a Waste To Energy (WTE) plant in Tehkhand only 400-500 ton of garbage is being dumped in the Okhla landfill site, which used to cater 1,700-ton of garbage from the entire south Delhi earlier. Kumar also said that at present the height of the Ghazipur landfill is 65 metres --only eight metres less than the height of Qutub Minar. The height of the Bhalswa landfill is 62 metres, while the height of the Okhla landfill is 42 metres, he said.