The State government has released an additional ₹ 14 crore for relief works related to solid waste slip at a landfill site of the Mangaluru City Corporation at Pachchanady in August last year, according to Mangaluru City South MLA D. Vedavyas Kamath and Mangaluru City North MLA Y. Bharat Shetty.
Earlier, the government had released ₹ 8 crore for the relief works, they said in a statement. With this, the government has released ₹ 22 crore, in all, sought for by the district administration for relief works.
The garbage slip in the rainy season had affected 35 families besides bringing down several coconut and arecanut palms. The waste slip covered 13.5 acres of private land, including farm land. A revenue official in the corporation said that of the ₹ 8 crore released earlier, half of the amount has been reserved for building a retaining wall in the area. Of the balance ₹ 4 crore reserved for providing compensation to the affected families, ₹ 2.52 crore has been given to 32 families having “pahani” towards damage caused to their farm land.
The official said that a meeting of the affected families has been called next month to decide on the other forms of compensation to be given to them and other relief measures to be taken up in the affected area.
Meanwhile, the civic body has proposed to the government bio-mining of solid waste dumped over the years in the site to reclaim the land for further use by recovering non-biodegradable material in the same site to send it for recycling.
According to the corporation Commissioner Akshy Sridhar, bio-mining is estimated to cost ₹ 17 crore.
An environment engineer of the civic body said that the dumped solid waste spread over 25 acres, including the 13.5 acres of private land, in Pachchanady is estimated to be six lakh tonnes. Once bio-mining is taken up, it is expected to come down to 2.4 lakh tonnes as the refuse derived fuel (RDF) material (such as plastic recovered) in the site are estimated at 40 %.
The ₹ 17-crore cost estimated excludes the transportation of the recovered material in bales. Bales of plastic recovered will have to be transported to cement industries which are at least 700 km away from Mangaluru. It required an additional fund, he said.
