CHENNAI: Turning garbage mountains into green space, the Navarikuppam Town Panchayat at a proposed estimate of Rs 50 lakh, is turning a dump yard into a park outside the Red Hills lake in two months time, said Panchayat officials. For the last 30 years, the space outside the Red Hills lake was a huge garbage mountain with more than 10,000 tonnes of plastic and bio waste. However, two months back, the Panchayat at a cost of Rs 10 lakh beautified the area by removing all the waste in one sweep.
“There were several garbage mountains of ten feet height in the two-acre area. When the Tiruvallur district collector Mageswari came across this two months back, she immediately directed to remove the garbage,” said the official. While 9,000 tonnes of nonbiodegradable waste has been shipped to Andhra Pradesh through private contractors, 1,000 tonnes will be recycled through biomining at Rs 33 lakhs.
Park facilities
According to officials, the park will have walkways, playground equipment such as swings, merry-go-round, and slides. “It will have compound walls and a gatekeeper to monitor the place so that no miscreant elements dump garbage or use it for wrong purposes,” said the official. For setting up the park and planting trees, the Panchayat has requested the Water Resources Department some amount of sand from the Puzhal lake. “If they respond positively, plans are on to plant 30 tree saplings and various plants immediately,” said the official. At the moment, the two-acre space has been cordoned off by the Panchayat with a signboard requesting the public to not dump garbage in the area.
Public welcomes move
“The garbage mountains were as tall as the ones in Kodungaiyur. Interestingly, the collector has taken some steadfast measures,” said V Lakshmy, a resident of Navarikuppam, which has more than 3,000 residents. All this time, the locals were devoid of any public space for leisure walking and they had to walk on the road, at risk of getting hit by motorists and buses. “Now, we can take children also and it will benefit the community,” she said. Gopi S, another resident said that the lanes adjacent to the Puzhal Eri used to be unsafe after 6 pm. “Now that the park is coming up, we can hope the area will be secure, especially once the park is functional,” he said.