SALIGAO: The state-of-the-art Saligao garbage treatment plant, built at a cost of Rs 146 crore, is all set to be inaugurated in May. It will handle approximately 100 tonnes of garbage from the coastal areas.
The people of Saligao had threatened to come on the roads against the project after the chief minister announced that the plant would handle garbage of entire North Goa.
Strongly opposing the government’s plan to treat the entire district’s garbage at the upcoming Solid Waste Treatment Plant at the Calangute-Saligao plateau, the Saligao comunidade has threatened to come onto the streets to protest this “ill-advised” decision.
Besides, the Goa Foundation and the Saligao Civic Forum have moved the NGT against the project.
Work on the solid waste management facility (SWMF), which started in November 2014, atop the Calangute-Saligao plateau, is progressing at a brisk pace, with the main ground-level sections comprising huge material segregation and recovery shed and compost shed completed.
Presently, around 20 to 30 tonnes of un-segregated garbage is dumped at the site everyday by the Calangute panchayat, while the SWMF, once ready, will need 100 tonnes per day to function optimally.
The SWMF is expected to handle waste from the entire North Goa coastal belt, which sees heavy tourist footfalls, which creates a lot of garbage.
The plant will generate its own electricity of 0.5 to 1 MW per 100 tonnes, said Sandeep Assolkar, an Engineer of Hindustan Waste Treatment Pvt Ltd, the company setting up the plant in association with SMC Infrastructure.
He said the work of the fitting the machinery has been completed and only some finishing works on construction was remaining.
“We plan to start the trial run in April,” he said.
Assolkar said that the plant has been planned as a state-of-the-art modern facility based on mechanical biological treatment (MBT) process with proper segregation, recovery of recyclables and bio-methanation process. It will have three sections – material segregation and recycling centre, treatment of wet fraction via bio-methanation and composting section and a land fill area for waste inerts.
Claude Alvares of Goa Foundation, which had moved the NGT, says that they have agreed to allow the plant for now.
“We have worked out an agreement between the company, Goa Foundation and the Saligao Civic Forum and have allowed the plant to start as per the NGT directions,” Alvares told Herald.
Claude said that one of the conditions set in the agreement is that all the garbage dumped at the Saligao plateau will be cleared within three years.
“The NGT has said that only 100 tonnes of garbage will be allowed to be treated per day and we have agreed that the garbage can be of whichever village, but only 100 tonnes would be allowed,” he says.
He further says that the NGT has given the applicants supervisory powers, which will regularly monitor the working of the plant.
“CCTVs will be put up at the gates so that movements of the tucks will be monitored, besides regular registers will be maintained of how much garbage has entered at the weighing scales,” he said.
Calangute MLA Michael Lobo, who initiated the project, says, “The Calangute panchayat has been dumping un-segregated garbage atop the Calangute-Saligao plateau since 1994. The leachate from the dump has already polluted the Salmona spring in Saligao and contaminated the groundwater table. They are still dumping un-segregated garbage there. Therefore, I have pursued the setting up of the solid waste management facility to treat waste on a scientific basis.”
“We have gone on a foreign trip with a 36-member delegation to finalise the technology, which is the best,” he said.
Further, Lobo, says, “Since 1998 to 2012, there were only foreign trips, junkets and discussions in the name of garbage menace, but nothing had been done. I, along with Manohar Parrikar, decided it was high time to have a plant of our own.”
He further said, “Goa is a tourism state and already many countries, like Germany, had red-carded Goa due to the garbage menace. Hence, the plant was a necessity.”
Saligao Sarpanch Eknath Oraskar said the plant is a good beginning for Goa, but maintained that it should be only for Saligao and Calangute constituencies.
“Around four to five such plants are required in Goa to solve the garbage problem,” he said.
But, he added, “The government needs to give an assurance that it would be only for the two constituencies.”
When pointed out whether enough garbage is generated in these two constituencies for the plant to work, he said that there 60,000 tonnes of garbage was already pending at the plateau and it would take at least six years to be cleared.
