The closure of Vilappilsala may have prompted the City Corporation to come out with alternative proposals for waste treatment, but most of them show no signs of progress or success.
First on this list is the project to set up a waste treatment plant at Chala, for which decks were formally cleared in November 2012.
The State government had signed an agreement with US-based Loro Group to set up a 35-tonne solid waste treatment plant, and the group was given the responsibility for construction of the Rs.65-crore entity.
The Chala plant was expected to produce 3.2 MW of power a day and supply it to the State at Rs.7.90 per unit.
The project ran into trouble when the Corporation, which as per the agreement had to supply 35 tonnes of garbage to the plant every day, backtracked from the plan after reports questioning the credentials of the U.S.-based company surfaced.
Local resistance to the plant also played its part in preventing the Corporation from going ahead with the project.
After the prolonged delay, the Corporation agreed to sign the concession agreement for providing uninterrupted supply of waste to the treatment plant last month, but with a few riders.
“Now it is up to the State government to take a decision. We are willing to sign the agreement provided the State government and the private firm agree to our terms,” Mayor K. Chandrika told The Hindu .
A senior official with the Suchitwa Mission, the civic body’s funding agency that gave Rs.5.7 crore to the Corporation for its decentralised garbage management projects, said the government had urged the firm to submit its financial closure statement and a few other documents. The project would proceed only after the issues put forward by the Corporation were sorted out, he added.
The mobile incinerator, procured by the government at a cost of Rs.2.19 crore as an intermediary step to process the accumulated waste since the closure of Vilappilsala, has been handed over to the Kottakkal Municipality. The move was after the Corporation refused to pool in its share of money to operate the incinerator.
Other project towards promoting decentralised garbage management was the setting up of pipe compost units in houses.
After nearly 60,000 pipe compost units had been installed, the project lost its sheen. The residents who took up the project began complaining of slow decay of garbage and presence of worms inside pipe composts.
But the one scheme that shows signs of success is the biogas plant project.
Nearly 2,000 residents in the city have installed the facility.
