Notwithstanding the ₹ 11 crore the State government would give the Coimbatore Corporation to improve solid waste management in the city as told by Chief Minister M.K. Stalin, there exists a gap that the civic body is yet to fill.
Of the 1,100 to 1,200 tonnes waste the city generates a day, the waste management contractor, Coimbatore Integrated Waste Management Company Pvt. Ltd., handled 600 tonnes and the Corporation another 100 to 150 tonnes by turning them into compost.
This left the Corporation with around 400 tonnes waste, which it was not processing but dumping in the open in Vellalore, said the Corporation sources, adding it had been the gap that the Corporation had not addressed as yet.
The problem started within a year or so of the Corporation implementing the solid waste management project in 2009-10 under the then Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission at around ₹ 100 crore.
At the time of implementing the project, the Corporation had estimated the waste to be processed at around 600 tonnes a day. But soon thereafter, the city limits expanded as 11 local bodies merged with the Corporation, increasing the waste to be processed every day to around 900 tonnes.
Over the years, the quantity of waste generated increased to around 1,100 to 1,200 tonnes a day. In the last 10 years, the Corporation had been dumping in Vellalore the waste generated over and above the quantity processed at the contractor’s processing plant.
This dumped waste had piled up so much that the Corporation had to recently spend ₹ 60 crore to process around nine lakh cubic metre, spread over 60 acre in Vellalore. The Corporation, using the Smart Cities Mission fund, had started bio-mining the accumulated waste. However, it continued to dump the additional waste, the sources said and added it was to process this additional quantity that the civic body needed to plan a project.
And, if the Corporation were to plan such a project, it should do so for not just the current additional waste, but twice or thrice the quantity keeping in mind the future needs and the possibility that the city area could once again increase, the sources added.
