The process of depositing solid waste in three granite quarries in the city will begin in the next two to three days, Minister for Urban Affairs Manjalamkuzhi Ali has said.
Addressing a press conference at his office here on Wednesday, Mr. Ali said the government had identified 20 quarries in and around the city to dump garbage.
Work in three of these quarries would begin immediately, he said. The Minister, however, refused to specify the location of these quarries.
ADVERTISEMENT
The quarries would first be cleared of water. The sides would be concreted as would the gaps between rocks at the bottom. A layer of plastic sheets would be laid before garbage was deposited in each of these quarries.
The garbage would be deposited in layers separated by mud. Pipes would be installed to allow gases generated inside the dump to escape to the surface. The three quarries together could hold garbage generated in the capital city for nearly a year, he said.
ADVERTISEMENT
The entire process would be done in such a manner as to ensure that there was no leakage from the quarries to the groundwater aquifers in the areas around them.
Uninhabited areas
Care would be taken to see to it that people living in nearby areas were not inconvenienced. “But then, the areas near the quarries we have chosen are uninhabited,” Mr. Ali said. In a reply to a question, the Minister said he had held talks with local representatives of all major political parties in the areas where the 20 quarries were located.
“The political leaders agreed to the government’s proposal. They understood that we have no other alternative. If we do not do this now, the health situation in the capital city may get out of hand,” he said. Very soon, Kudumbasree workers would start collecting garbage from households. But first, the huge quantity of garbage dumped by the side of roads in the city would be cleared.
In reply to a question, Mr. Ali said the Vilappilsala plant was “not a closed chapter”. The court had asked the government to install a leachate treatment plant there. This would only prove beneficial to the local people, he said. When asked about the proposed pyrolysis-gasification plant at Chala, he said the 35-tonne-capacity plant could be set up only if all the garbage deposited at the identified site was cleared and the site was handed over for construction activities.
In other districts
He added that in about a year gasification unitwould be set up at the Vijayapuram panchayat in Kottayam. Seven large-scale treatment plants would come up across Kerala — in Thiruvananthapuram, Brahmapuram, Kozhikode, Kannur, Kottayam, Thrissur and Kollam, he said.