ANDREA FERNANDES
SALIGAO: A day after Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar revealed in the Assembly on Monday that the State government has sanctioned Rs 84 crore to nearly double the garbage handling capacity of the solid waste management plant at Saligao it received a negative response from the Saligao Civic and Consumer Cell (SCCC) and Goa Foundation.
Reacting to the announcement, Goa Foundation director Dean D’Cruz said he didn’t think it was a good idea to expand the capacity of the garbage plant as this would lead to a catastrophe.
He said as a member of the High Court appointed Monitoring Committee he had been visiting the Saligao plant and found that the plant was not working to its capacity. He last visited the plant on May 19.
D’Cruz went on to explain the findings of the site inspection carried out in May. He said that inside the sorting shed they could see the difficult task of attempting to segregate various recyclable materials which were filthy with rotting organic waste.
“The baling machine was spewing out compressed bales of plastic and paper which were completely filthy and smelling. These were to be sent as RDF as there were no takers for this dirty plastic and paper. From reports it is understood that since January 2018 no RDF has been sent to Karnataka and it remains a mystery as to where this material is being dumped since then,” he pointed out.
Till January this year the RDF waste that could not be dealt with was being sent to cement plants in Karnataka. In between for four months the RDF waste was being stored at the plant itself.
As per the standard plant operations the RDF produced by a solid waste management plant should be between 15-20 per cent. It may be noted that the RDF at about 40 per cent (normally just 10 per cent) of the total garbage entering the site clearly indicates the plant is completely inefficient producing little or no recyclables and wastefully (supposedly) burning them.
“The RDF waste coming from this plant is between 40-50 per cent which goes to show that they are unable to segregate garbage. The composting machines were lying idle possibly because the quality of compost produced had very little nutritional value as all the organic juices were squeezed out of it and the compost mainly consisted of dry fibres, crushed glass and other inorganic particles. They are barely any takers for the compost produced here and a huge heap of this can be spotted outside the wall of the plant,” he said.
The fact that the existing dump at the site has only been partially cleared despite so many operational years of the plant shows the complete apathy of the operators in dealing with the problem.
When officials at the site where asked where the recyclable waste was being taken they claimed they had no information where the material is being taken. Goa Foundation strongly suspected that a lot of filthy recyclable waste has been quietly hidden in the existing dumps and the balance taken out of the factory and disposed in an unscientific way.
“Seems like the continued failure of the plant can be addressed only by accepting sorted garbage. Despite constant suggestions by Goa Foundation to instruct the panchayats to supply only sorted garbage no action has been taken yet. One can imagine the state of the plant once the capacity is doubled,” D’Cruz said.
When Herald contacted the Managing Director of the Goa Waste Management Corporation, Sanjit Rodrigues about where the RDF was sent from the garbage treatment plant he hurriedly replied that the quantity going out does not depend on them it also depends on the cement plants operational.
“Most of the cement plants close down for maintenance. For the last four months due to maintenance the cement plants were shut down and hence the RDF had to be stored here itself. We do not pay for the RDF going out from the plant as it is the plant operator who has to take it. We pay the operator a total of Rs 70 crore over ten years and Rs 7 crore on an average in a year to operate the plant. Our philosophy is zero waste, zero landfill,” Rodrigues said.
“Every day they treat 125 tonnes of garbage at the plant. Whatever recyclables and RDF is generated they have to dispose it,” he added.
