Tambaram municipality has planned to carry out improvement work, at a cost of Rs. 3 crore, at its garbage dumping yard in Kannadapalayam. The project aims to reduce and gradually put an end to burning of garbage at the yard.
Experts say it will also eliminate problems of waste collection and disposal, and enable segregation. It will make it easy to transfer segregated garbage to an integrated compost yard at Venkatamangalam, when the facility becomes operational.
M. Karikalan, municipal chairman, says compound walls will be built around the dumping yard at an estimated cost of Rs. 75 lakh. Further, they have begun spraying effluent micro solutions to prevent flies from hovering over the garbage mounds, he says. A material recovery station, to segregate garbage at Kannadapalayam, is in the offing.
High mast lamps will be installed and a pathway created at the dumping yard, that now resembles a hillock, to prevent tyres of waste collection trucks from getting stuck, Mr. Karikalan says.
Additionally, a water storage facility has been created to reduce temperatures at the garbage mounds and prevent them from catching fire, as was witnessed at Pallikaranai recently, he says. The Kannadapalayam yard receives 70 tonnes of garbage everyday, on an average, from 39 wards in the municipality.
Residents of Kannadapalayam have been suffering due to the increase in dumping of garbage. The worst affected are students of the municipal school opposite the yard who have to put up with smoke, soot and flies swarming their premises.