COIMBATORE:Though Coimbatore Corporation is now able to hand over dry waste to private companies at `4 per kg in several wards, it does not have a system in place to process wet waste at source.
The zonal sanitary officers to whom Express spoke confirmed that they were sending wet waste to the Vellalore dump yard and handing over dry waste to a private firm. A private company has an employee each in every ward of the Central and West zones. They take the dry waste as soon as sanitary workers segregate the collected garbage.
Also, groups of youth have succeeded in source segregation in Ramanathapuram (Ward 67), Kovaipudur (Ward 90) and Nanjundapuram (Ward 75). They collected 8,734.5 tonnes of dry waste including paper, plastic and bottles from these three wards in May. So far in June, they have collected 8357.5 tonnes.
As the Corporation has not been able to process wet waste at source, 850-900 tonnes of waste (including wet and dry waste) per day is being taken to the Vellalore dump yard. However, the contractor is producing only 40 tonnes of manure from it.
“We stopped releasing funds to the contractor maintaining the dump yard last October as he is not carrying out segregation of waste effectively. We are trying to find ways to destroy wet waste,” said Corporation Commissioner K Vijayakarthikeyan.
Earlier, the civic body had proposed to set up waste-to-energy plant (producing electricity using garbage) inside the dump yard, but the project is yet to take off.
Under the project, a contractor was to be engaged to generate electricity using half the garbage. Though proposed two years ago, the project is yet to take off. A senior official said the Corporation had not yet received the government’s permission for it.
RTI activist Daniel Jesudass, who is among those demanding that the Vellalore dump yard be closed, said dump yards should be created in every ward or zone, for the local people’s use. The system of dumping massive amounts of garbage in one place creates health problems for the area’s residents and harms the environment, he pointed out.