The Hindu : Mounting garbage adds to woes of motorists

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jul 08, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Tamil Nadu-Chennai

Mounting garbage adds to woes of motorists

By Akila Dinakar

CHENNAI JULY 7. While motorists have a tough time driving on what is left of Ennore Expressway, which is pocked by the high tides and faces severe threat of erosion, the Tiruvottriyur, Madhavaram and Kathivakkam municipalities are adding to its problems by dumping garbage along the coastline and on either side of Basin Road.

A visit to the area showed mounds of putrefying garbage, assaulting the senses of motorists when they cross the dangerous stretch, made more difficult at nights due to bad roads and inadequate lighting.

Motorists passing via Basin Road off the Tiruvottriyur level crossing near KCP come face to face with a swarm of flies. The area, which is also called Mattumandai, has a signboard put up by the Southern Railway which says, ``The land belongs to Southern Railway. Those encroaching upon it will be punished''. Rag pickers who set fire to the garbage often cause yet another hazard for motorists as black smoke engulfs the area.

While the garbage dumping has become a settled fact for over a decade now, the idea of the municipalities acquiring a dumping ground has not borne fruit.

Even as the Kathivakkam Municipality proposal for a common dumping facility near Sattangadu and Periyakuppam has been pending with the Collector's office, the Municipalities openly admit that they are dumping unsegregated garbage along the coastline at Talankuppam.

The Southern Railway, which has a ground reservoir with Metrowater emptying 30 lakh litres per day near the dumping site at Basin Road, has complained to the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB) and the Tiruvottriyur Municipality, objecting to the unauthorised dumping, the Divisional Railway Manager of Southern Railway said.

If the unauthorised dumping at Tiruvottriyur is going on at least in an area that does not have much residential population, the case of Ambattur Municipality is even more difficult, with residents of closely packed apartments in Mogappair, Collector Nagar, Jeevan Bima Nagar, Park Road and near the Anna Nagar West bus depot having to put up with virtual mountains of uncleared garbage in their front or backyards.

While the stormwater drains lining the New Ambattur Industrial Estate Road is choked with garbage dumped by sugarcane and fruit vendors along the canal, an open ground adjacent the Round Buildings is used as a transit station by the Municipality. The floods caused by the rainspell in November last year carried with it floating garbage.

S. Venkatesan, Secretary of the Elango Nagar Welfare Association, says the residents are facing chronic problems with the garbage dumped at the Officer's Colony Bus Stand. Residents of the area said they were resigned to the situation.

Even as the TNPCB has served a notice to the Tiruvottriyur and Ambattur Municipal Corporations restraining them from dumping garbage in unauthorised sites, the officials said the solution to the problem rested only with source segregation of waste which had to be taken up on a war footing especially in the apartment complexes where the welfare associations could be roped in for campaigning on source segregation and composting of waste.

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