Why Delhi’s Ghazipur landfill collapse was a disaster waiting to happen
When a city collapses under the weight of its own garbage, it’s a tragedy. When that city happens to be the national capital of the world’s largest democracy, it’s a monumental tragedy.
Delhi for too long has been sitting over the problem of how to manage its waste, which on Friday (September 1) claimed at least two lives as the mountain of trash swept them away into a nearby canal along with several vehicles.
The Ghazipur landfill that collapsed is about 50 metre high. To put that into perspective, it is more than 15 storeys high. The landfill site receives about one fourth of the city’s 10,000 tonnes of trash generated on a daily basis. Shockingly, the site lacks a certification from the Delhi Pollution Control Committee and should have been shut down in 2006.
The collapse wasn’t a mere accident. It was brought upon the city by a mix of public and political apathy. Worse still, everyone saw it coming. Many of us staying in Delhi have passed by the landfill wondering how people manage to live in the area and with an elitist arrogance thanking our stars for having done well enough in life to not be residents of east Delhi that houses the garbage.
But it doesn’t matter where you live in Delhi. The heap of this ever-piling up filth is coming after all of us because the waste management strategy in the city is conspicuous by its absence.
The fact that municipal corporations are on the lookout for space in this cramped city to park more and more garbage is regressive to say the least.
The population in Delhi rises by about 3.5 per cent annually and going by government figures, it adds to an additional 1.3 per cent waste in the same period. All four landfills – Ghazipur, Bhalswa, Okhla and Narela-Bawana are filled beyond capacity. They will all come crashing down claiming perhaps more lives and vehicles.
Moreover, landfills are not just problematic when they collapse, they are death traps even as they silently stand tall spewing poisonous gasses such as methane.
Fires are a routine at the Ghazipur landfill. Fire tenders perennially stationed at the landfill to douse a possible blaze speak volumes about our civic preparedness and inability to find and implement long-term solutions.
It shouldn’t need an Einstein to tell us that more landfills are not a solution to our problems, we need a waste management strategy. And we need it now.
There are examples Delhi can emulate.
Japan’s Yokohama smart city project is a case in point which involved not just the government and private sector but also the local population. Among the various aspects that the project, which covered 435 square kilometres, transformed was waste management.
Waste-to-energy incinerators were set up to treat garbage and meet the ever-rising power demand. The first step was waste segregation. This is where people’s participation mattered. Thousands of seminars and campaigns ensured people were participants in the transformation of their city.
This awareness also helped people take responsibility of the waste they produced. When the project began Yokohama had seven waste-to-energy plant. In just about five years, the number came down to four because there just wasn’t enough waste to run the plants.
We in Delhi are running behind time. Even then a start has to be made. The first step is segregation. It is also the most difficult because we don’t consider our garbage to be our problem once we safely park it outside our homes. That’s where fines must step in to ensure compliance.
Solid Waste Management Rules notified by the Centre in 2016 make it possible for civic agencies to impose penalties for non-segregation.
When we step out of the house to buy daily use items and forget to carry a bag along taking instead a "poly bag" from shopkeepers and vendors, our carelessness is not irresponsible. It is criminal.
The earth (and our environment) does not end with us. More people will inherit it from us. It is our responsibility to keep it in the best possible shape.