The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Waste management practices yet to solidify

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Monday, Oct 13, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Waste management practices yet to solidify

K. Manikandan

Local bodies in southern suburbs are faced with several roadblocks

— File photo: K.Manikandan

Adhoc arrangement: Vacant plots in southern suburbs of Chennai serve as makeshift dump yards in the absence of effective and sound solid waste management practices by most urban and rural local bodies. A scene at Medavakkam.

TAMBARAM: The inability to implement source segregation, shortage of landfill sites and poor support from the State government are the most important factors that come in the way of rural and urban local bodies in the southern suburbs of Chennai to put in place sound solid waste management practices.

The southern suburbs of Chennai have a population of over 30 lakh in six municipalities, 13 town panchayats and 25 village panchayats. In addition to this, the floating population in the suburbs contributes a fairly large quantity of solid waste. But for a few locations in some of the local bodies where kitchen waste is converted into manure, garbage is dumped on waterbodies and along waterways and vacant spots in other areas.

If the magnitude of the problem in Pallikaranai marshland is huge owing to the dumping of a few thousand tonnes of garbage in one designated location, in this region of Chennai it is spread over different pockets.

Kannadapalayam, for instance, has been the dumping yard for garbage generated from all 39 wards of Tambaram Municipality. The problems of pollution in residential areas around it are immense. For years, children of a municipal school opposite the yard have been putting up with dust and smoke while in class and during lunch hour.

“Local bodies and the State government are unable to come up with effective alternatives to conventional methods,” said M. Sadasivam, a resident of Kannadapalayam. He pointed out to a small rural local body like Mudichur, where residents have been segregating garbage at source and kitchen waste is converted into manure through composting. And in Sholinganallur Town Panchayat, the manure from the compost yard is used to raise a kitchen garden.

At present, garbage collection and disposal in the municipalities are being taken care of by the staff of the Sanitary Department, who are ill-equipped to tackle problems of huge proportions. In town panchayats, staff on general duty look after the task while in St. Thomas Mount Panchayat Union, the staff of the Total Sanitation Campaign monitor handling of garbage in the village panchayats. The acute fund crunch in village panchayats had made it impossible for these rural local bodies for composting of kitchen waste.

Further, shortage of suitable landfill sites due to encroachment of government property and ‘poromboke’ land, forces authorities and elected representatives to dump garbage amidst residential areas, inside burial grounds and public places. Unlike Pammal Municipality or Kunrathur Town Panchayat or Mudichur Village Panchayat where corporates and voluntary organisations have joined hands with the respective local body administration, most others have to look after this task on their own.

And under such circumstances, dumping yards are under severe strain with the quantity of garbage disposed of there is on the rise as a result of changing lifestyles of people which include an increased consumption of plastic and other forms of use-and-throw goods. Integrated compost yards, like the one under construction at Venkatamangalam near Vandalur for Tambaram, Alandur and Pallavaram Municipalities and similar ones proposed, alone could prevent problems at present witnessed in Pallikaranai, Mr. Sadasivam said.

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