BHUBANESWAR: With urban waste management posing a big challenge, the Housing and Urban Development department is planning to set up integrated waste processing complexes in the major cities and towns to effectively tackle the menace.
The state generates about 1,847 tonne per day (TPD) solid waste apart from hundreds of tonnes of wet waste. Further, it has 83 large dump sites spread across the urban areas where around 24 lakh tonne of legacy waste are yet to be remediated.
Considering the large-scale generation of waste, Housing and Urban Development minister Krushna Chandra Mahapatra has asked department authorities to look into the establishment of integrated waste processing complexes in municipal corporations and larger municipalities. These complexes will have all types of processing plants including compressed biogas (CBG) plants for easy disposal of waste and reduction of transportation and infrastructure costs.
The minister has also directed the officials to expedite the process of CBG plant establishment in five municipal corporations of Berhampur, Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Sambalpur and Rourkela along with the Puri-Konark and Boudhgarh-Sonepur clusters.
The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation has been instructed to expedite the processing and clearing the accumulated garbage at temporary transit station near Sainik School and also operationalise the mega waste processing centre at Palasuni. The civic body will also take up renovation and refurbishment of all non-functioning toilets and e-toilets under its jurisdiction on priority.
A decision was also taken to develop a digital application for sanitation monitoring in all municipal corporations and municipalities in line with the Safa app of BMC. Mahapatra also recommended integrating all such applications with the Sujog platform of the H&UD department for effective monitoring of the projects and works at the department level.