The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has come down heavily against the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) for not addressing the issue of ‘legacy waste’ at the garbage site at Uruli Devachi and Phursungi villages, around 20 km from Pune city.
The principal NGT Bench at New Delhi, in an order on Wednesday, has directed the PMC to deposit ₹2 crore as bank guarantee in a separate account and utilise it for restoration of the environment under an action plan.
The Bench was hearing a petition filed by the villagers of Uruli Devachi and Phursungi against unscientific disposal of garbage and non-implementation of NGT’s direction by the PMC.
It has also directed the Secretary of the State Environment Department to monitor the compliance of a previous direction of July 11, 2020 and also assess the compensation to be recovered by the PMC for continued violations.
Since 1991, these villages have faced the depredations of Pune’s indiscriminate expansion with the problem of solid waste disposal reaching monstrous proportions.
Noted activist and lawyer Asim Sarode, representing the villagers, argued during the proceedings that the PMC is proposing a grant of permission from the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB) for establishing a 200 MT garbage processing plant near the twin villages.
The lawyer representing the PMC said that there is no such proposal for additional garbage processing and assured through a statement that no fresh dumping of waste was taking place at the current site, which has already been bio-mined.
The tribunal observed that as the PMC had already exceeded its stipulated time for clearing the site, it was liable to pay compensation for continued violation for “not clearing the legacy waste in the given time limit and in accordance with the statutory norms”.
In 1981, the Maharashtra government had allotted 43 acres of land in Uruli and provisioned another 120 acres in Phursungi in 2003 to meet a growing Pune’s waste-disposal demands.
The city’s garbage is sent to more than 45 processing centres, with the largest ones at Uruli and Phursungi — a combined 160 acres — capable of processing up to 500 tonnes of waste a day. The villages have been bearing the brunt of Pune’s indiscriminate urbanisation since the early 1990s.
The methane emissions from the landfills have since adversely affected the health of the villagers, who were forced to endure the ravages of water pollution as well.
“The NGT’s direction must be viewed as a major victory for the villagers of Uruli Devachi and Phursungi, who have suffered heavily owing to the PMC’s lax enforcement of rules,” said Mr. Sarode.
The NGT has also directed the PMC to file a status report giving information regarding the extent of the waste still remaining at the site and the timeline by which this ‘legacy waste’ will be finally cleared.
The tribunal also mandated the civic body to give information regarding its waste processing plants and their performance in terms of management of rejects arising out of them. It directed the PMC to avoid dumping at the sanitary landfill and asked the MPCB and CPCB to jointly give a report on execution of bio-mining as per guidelines.
