Even as the corporation has pooled its resources to support personnel of Fire and Rescue Service to extinguish the fire at the Ariyamangalam garbage dump, the civic body has short-listed a company to set up a Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) plant to produce energy from the accumulated waste.
After analysing the proposals submitted by two bidders, the corporation has selected a company that fulfils the qualification criteria and terms and conditions.
“The subject has been approved. The next stage is to sign an agreement to award the contract,” N. Ravichandran, Special Officer-cum-Commissioner, Tiruchi Corporation, told The Hindu .
He said that the fire reduced to ashes only a portion of the accumulated garbage at the yard and it would have no bearing on implementing the project. It was estimated that the dump yard had about 11 lakh cubic metre of waste accumulated over the years. The project aimed at clearing the accumulated garbage within five years.
Mr. Ravichandran said that about 450 tonnes of waste was generated from different parts of the city daily. The plant would process about 600 tonnes of waste a day to produce energy. Besides using a small portion of fresh garbage, the company would be asked to excavate, segregate and stabilise the old garbage. There should be zero residual on the ground with no landfill.
The official said that the project would be implemented on a Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode. On its part, the corporation would erect a shed with concrete platform for the project at a cost of ₹6 crore. The proposal, seeking allocation of fund, had been sent to the government. The company would erect machinery for producing energy from garbage. The corporation would bear the power consumption charges.
Claiming that it was a best method for solving the long pending issue, the official said that the entire garbage dumped on 47 acres of land would be cleared within five years from the start of the project. It might take about 6 months to begin production of fuel from waste.
On the ongoing operation to put out the fire, he said the fire has been largely contained. However, smoke continued to billow from the mounds.
A total of 14 fire tenders, in addition to all water tankers of the corporation have been deployed to extinguish the fire fully and stop the smoke. A health camp had been set up in two schools at Ambikapuram to screen the affected people.
