CHENNAI: The proposed waste-to-energy plant, earlier planned in Venkatamangalam by the Tambaram City Municipal Corporation, has now been shifted to the Keerapakkam area, around 3-4 km away from the Tamil Nadu Urban Habitat Development Board (TNUHDB) resettlement site, where hundreds of residents evicted from Anakaputhur were recently relocated, a corporation official told TNIE.
The Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) has now floated a tender to select a concessionaire for establishing the waste-to-energy (WtE) facility, along with a scientific landfill at Keerapakkam, to process the waste from Chennai-Tambaram-Avadi cluster. The project will be implemented under the Design, Build, Finance, Operate, and Transfer (DBFOT) model on a public-private partnership (PPP) basis.
Tambaram corporation commissioner S Balachander told TNIE, “While the land required for the facility is insufficient at Venkatamangalam, the site has been shifted to Keerapakkam, where 75 acres of land has been earmarked for the project.” Meanwhile, a Bio-CNG plant and a Construction and Demolition waste processing plant have now been proposed in the Venkatamangalam area, he said.
According to the tender documents, the project facilities will be developed on about 75 acres of land provided by Tambaram City Municipal Corporation at Keerapakkam. The project will include a pre-processing unit to process 800 tonnes of unsegregated waste per day, a WtE plant capable of incinerating at least 2,400 tonnes of municipal solid waste daily to generate 45 MW of power, and a scientific landfill spanning around 50 acres of the total land for safe disposal of residual waste, the documents stated.
The plant will process the waste generated from parts of Chennai, Tambaram, Avadi, and other nearby municipalities such as Poonamallee, Thiruverkadu, Kundrathur, Mangadu, and two others, according to a corporation official.
From Chennai, around 1,800 tonnes of segregated waste and 800 tonnes of unsegregated waste will be transported daily to the plant, with the civic body bearing the cost of transportation to the project site. From Tambaram, around 400-500 tonnes of solid waste and at least 200 tonnes of waste generated daily by Avadi City Municipal Corporation will also be transported to the plant for processing.
The concessionaire will be allowed to market and sell recyclables and electricity generated from the project and retain the revenue. Tambaram corporation will provide the land required for establishing the facilities, said a corporation official.
“While we received opposition from residents of Venkatamangalam earlier, and now also from people in Keerapakkam, scientific and environmentally sound management of municipal solid waste is essential. Though public consultations are usually part of the due process for such projects, it is not certain whether such discussions will take place in this case,” the official said.
Meanwhile, GCC has also floated a tender to select a concessionaire for setting up a waste-handling facility at the Perungudi dump yard to process 1,000 tonnes of solid waste per day, including a composting unit with a capacity of 700 tonnes per day.