HYDERABAD: Having received stick from the National Green Tribunal a few days ago over lack of proper facilities to treat and dispose of solid waste in municipal areas in Telangana, the state government proposes to equip urban local bodies with an efficient and sustainable waste management system for safe collection, treatment and disposal facilities.
A majority of ULBs in Telangana do not have proper treatment and disposal facility in dealing with municipal solid waste (MSW).
The ULBs in Telangana, excluding GHMC, generate 2,600 to 2,800 tonnes of solid waste a day. While the volume of waste is growing at a rate of 5 pc every year, the collection efficiency is just 70 to 80 per cent.
The proposed initiatives will focus on components that include strengthening of infrastructure for 100 per cent door-to-door collection, segregation and safe transportation of waste, revival of the defunct and upgrade of the existing processing plants, and setting up new facilities (composting, RDF etc), both stand-alone and cluster-based.
The department of municipal administration and urban development has submitted a detailed report to NGT on ULBs that will deal with MSW and setting of MSW plants backed by power generation or otherwise. The processing and disposal of waste will be taken up in public-private partnership.
The government plans to spend Rs 325.42 crore on the programme. Of that, Rs 65.08 crore will come under Swachh Bharat Mission (20 pc grant/viability gap fund), Rs 65.08 crore from the state budget as a matching grant, and Rs 130.16 crore under the 14th Finance Commission.
The ULBs will adopt both PPP and non-PPP approaches with a mix of centralised and decentralised solutions based on quantity of waste generation and geographical locations considering economic variability.
Each ULB will prepare a City Sanitation Plan outlining the requirements for short, medium and long-term strategies for solid waste management. Detailed project reports will be prepared for each ULB for precise costing, choice of technology and site for processing and disposal.
The state government will guide ULBs on drafting laws on levying user charges, penalties for violators, and exploring revenue-earning options like sale of waste and by-products, clean development mechanism, SWM cess, landfill tax or processing fee for financial sustainability.
A regional municipal solid waste project will be set up in case of smaller ULBs and integrated treatment and disposal plants in case of metropolitan areas. The existing clusters will be reorganised more comprehensively.
The state government will designate a nodal agency as company or state-level utility (which may be called State MSW Management Company Limited) for identifying and enabling the development of regional municipal solid waste projects. Each such project should have the capacity to treat 300 tonnes or more of municipal solid waste per day.
A technical cell with experts will be set up to help ULBs identify sites for establishing processing, treatment and landfill facilities, select PPP models, suitable technologies, structuring and financing of projects.