With the Tiruchirapalli City Corporation sitting over the problem for years together, the State government appears to be stepping in. A team of experts from Chennai is likely to inspect the Ariyamangalam garbage dump, possibly on Thursday, to explore ways to go in for a scientific closure of the garbage dump, sources told The Hindu .
On Wednesday, Commissioner of Municipal Administration Chandrakant B. Kamble inspected the dump and discussed with officials the options for a solution.
The corporation has been dithering over a proposal to go in for scientific closure of the dump, on the lines of a project taken up in Coimbatore, over the past year few years. Proposals on generating power from the waste has also failed to take off. The civic body had all but abandoned the project and had even announced in its Budget this year that about 10 acres of land in the dump site would be retrieved to accommodate 400 tonnes of garbage collected from the city everyday.
However, the massive fire affecting thousands of residents and the public outcry has left the corporation with no alternative but to find a permanent solution to the problem.
Air quality monitoring
A team of officials led by R. Lakshmi, District Environmental Engineer, and U.S. Karunakaran, Chief Scientific Officer, Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board, Tiruchi, were camping at the site since Tuesday night to monitor the ambient air quality around the dump.
The officials installed air samplers at three residential areas and other places around the dump to check for any emission of toxic gases. The officials reported that there was no emission of such gases till Thursday afternoon.
