Pratik Parab

[email protected]

The presentation of the black hole technology hosted by the Margao Municipal Council and delivered by the TeslaGreenINC has created more doubts in the minds of the people of Margao. The audience at the presentation consisted of persons who have been closely associated with the entire Sonsodo menace for decades now. Some doubts which have been raised as to how will the machine handle mixed garbage, what will happen to the Fomento Green at Sonsodo and who will take care of the daily garbage ? 

It was with high hopes that the MMC in 2012 inaugurated the Garbage Treatment Plant at Sonsodo by signing a concession agreement with the Fomento Green. The plant did begin functioning only to be halted over and over again citing that the garbage being sent to the plant doesn't fulfill the requisite standards of the machine. Later the Fomento Green brushed off its responsibility of treating the huge dump of garbage and handed back the the land to the MMC. Meanwhile the dump kept increasing and so did every rain keep emitting lot of leachate on to residential and open areas. 

This delay wasn't enough and soon Fomento complained that they are receiving mixed garbage and the treatment can’t happen. After lot of volleys back and forth Fomento demanded a land fill site which was ready some years ago. However it was then realised that the land fill site was too small and would be full within a matter of year and a half. Now all the garbage goes to the plant dries up and is dumped back into the main dump. 

It has taken 6 years, 3 Governments, 3 Chief Ministers and numerous Chairpersons and Chief Officers of MMC to ascertain that the Fomento Green plant is of no use now and the MMC has now taken the way of searching alternatives. In 2017, 2 big screens were stationed at the Sonsodo plant which screened waste and at the dump and managed to dispose off atleast 20 thousand tonnes of the dump. 

However the dump is of a size 5 times bigger then the disposed waste and hence that plant too failed. Meanwhile the MMC has almost spent a crore on covering the waste during monsoons. In comes the Black hole technology, there have been several persons who tried their technologies but have left the work due to the nature of the garbage. 

The MMC Chairperson Babita Angle has already agreed that there has been a trust deficit as far as the sonsodo dump removal is concerned as there have been several parties who attempted the work but failed. However the people too are not very keen to jump into the expense on this new technology. Sriram Raiturkar an RTI Activist who attended the presentation said "The Fomento Green had handed over the site as they claime that there are metals and other non treatable waste found in the dump. Now, how what different is this technology going to do to dispose the garbage?" He said that the plan of the TeslaGreenINC to use segregation machinery and then dispose garbage is going to take decades to finish the job as the volume of the garbage is magnanimous. 

Sriram also said that now that the MMC is thinking of a different party to treat the garbage the tender and the work allotted to the Fomento Green needs to be either re-looked or forfeited once and for all by looking into the legal aspects. Orlando Pacheco a member of the Solid Waste Management Committee of the MMC said "I feel that the Blackhole tech is still in the Research and Development stage and apart from small plant is working in Bangalore they have not done any groundbreaking work in India. Hence it is not a good idea to go ahead with this technology". 

Speaking on the present Fomento Green plant Orlando said "The Fomento is not interested in doing the job and if they are not interested they should be asked to leave and vacate the plant. It is because of them that the MMC has to now spend crores again to dispose the dump"  

The Chairperson of MMC Babita Angle said "Sonsodo dump has a lot of mixed waste. Hence we feel that with the permissions from Government we can have a small 2 tonne plant for demo and can be seen how it works".