After garbage, piled up mounds of building debris along the streets of city and outskirts, open spaces and even at the water bodies continue to be a major hurdle for the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC).
In absence of earmarked yards where builders could dump the debris or mechanism to collect such debris by the GHMC, at a fee, has resulted in demolition and construction material getting piled up everywhere. The just concluded Swachh Hyderabad had exposed the inadequacy with municipal staff deeming it fit to dump it near lake sides.
The civic body has now decided to make a fresh bid at tackling the indiscriminate dumping of construction debris in the city and outskirts. Senior officials concede that the civic body over the decades did not come up with right solutions to the issue and said a thorough assessment is being made now and solutions worked out.
No headwayFew earlier efforts such as identifying a vacant site at Dundigal for dumping of bricks, sand, concrete and plaster was tried out couple of years back, but it was not taken forward.
“Presently, this debris is lifted and shifted to different points. A small part of it goes to Jawaharnagar dump yard and most is sent to the rock quarries at Rajendranagar, Yapral near Alwal and Serilingampally,” said an official, declining to be identified.
Quarry sitesSince quarry areas does not have future use for habitation, the corporation looks at placing lifted debris there and after a period of time, cap it and develop amusement parks or recreational facilities for citizens. “These quarries are chopped down to levels much below roads and there is no way other usages could be planned given problems in laying water or sewer pipelines there,” said the official.
The civic body does impose fines on those caught dumping the debris. “Penalties of Rs.5,000 to Rs.10,000 are imposed and in some instances, hefty fine of Rs.50,000 too is collected,” says N. Ravi Kiran, Additional Commissioner (Health & Sanitation).
Real estate boom in the last decade exposed the lack or preparedness on part of GHMC in tackling the construction and demolition waste. From individuals demolishing, renovating or getting their dwellings built - to big builders with multi-storeyed complexes - do not know where to actually shift the resulting wastage. And all gets surreptitiously dropped along the roadsides, open parks and lake beds like it happened in dumping at Satam Cheruvu during the recent Swachh Hyderabad initiative.
Pune modelThe civic body did toy with different concepts but did not pursue further on the idea of setting up dedicated dump sites for this debris. Four years ago, it thought of adopting the Pune Municipal Corporation model where private parties were involved in reuse of the debris for different purposes such as laying of roads, filling sites and so on. The Delhi model of making use of demolition debris as granular sub-base, setting up kerb stones was also contemplated but did not make any progress.
The GHMC, Commissioner and Special Officer, Somesh Kumar, said ground work on the tackling demolition debris was already done and a detailed plan being worked out. “The idea is to have sites at different locations where those with large debris can dump directly on their own,” he said.
GHMC strategy soonCollection points are also being proposed at different locations for those generating smaller quantity of the debris with a possibility incorporated on the civic body collecting the same from construction site and shifting for a small fee. “Different models are being worked out and shortly we will come out with an appropriate strategy,” added Mr. Somesh Kumar.
