Burning of garbage along ORR poses environmental threat

Dumping of garbage and setting them on fire continues unabated on the fringes of Outer Ring Road, a vital link to the city’s extended areas.

A drive from Minjur-Vandalur on the Outer Ring Road (ORR) is not a pleasant experience as non-stop burning of garbage along the highway at many spots affects visibility and also causes irritation to many motorists.

A resident of Tiruneermalai, M. Keerthivasan, said several motorists witnessed the burning of garbage along the service roads of the Outer Ring Road. Their locality has, for a long time, remained largely neglected and even waste from industrial units was burnt here, he added.

“While the situation near the border of Kundrathur Town Panchayat and Sirukalathur village panchayat is the worst in terms of sanitation, the scenes near Tirumudivakkam and several other stretches remain garbage strewn,” he said. According to him, garbage dumping and subsequent burning has been taking place in this area for many years as a result of which even the wells here are contaminated.

According to residents, garbage along Adyar River garbage is dumped by village panchayats of Kundrathur Panchayat Union and Kundrathur Town Panchayat.

Residents have appealed to the Panchayat Union, District Rural Development Agency and Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board to intervene and stop the menace.

Officials of Directorate of Town Panchayats said the garbage collected from 18 wards are being segregated, recycled and taken to the compost yard to minimise disposal in landfills. The town panchayat is one of the local bodies that awaits location of an alternate site for landfill. But the huge mound of garbage has to be handled using bio-mining process, for which clearance is awaited from the State Exchequer. They said they had instructed industrial units not to dump waste by the roadside.