TEAM HERALD
MARGAO: After displaying initial enthusiasm over the proposal, all appears quiet in the corridors of the Margao Civic body over the scientific capping of the Sonsodo waste dumping site.
MMC Chief Officer Deepali Naik had told the media around May that work on the capping project estimated to cost the civic body a whopping Rs 7.5 crore would take off after the monsoons this year. But nothing has been heard on the proposal, raising questions whether the council has developed cold feet, after the Goa State Pollution Control Board came out openly against the capping.
When Herald contacted the MMC Chief Officer to throw light on the capping project, Naik said that the Executive Engineer PWD is presently going through the technical aspects of the project report prepared by the Kerala-based consultant Balkrishnan.
And she gave an impression that the project is delayed because of a host of queries raised pertaining to technical aspects.
Sources in the civic body, however, said the proposal for the scientific capping of the Sonsodo site has been relegated to the background ever since the Goa State Pollution Control Board wrote a letter to the municipality to carry out a cost-benefit analysis of both capping and segregation of the Sonsodo waste.
Though the civic body had got back to the GSPCB saying that the Board was free to carry out such an exercise at its end, subsequent developments on the Sonsodo front, with the visit of Environment Minister Alina Saldanha and later Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar to the waste dumping site had forced the municipality to tread a cautious path. The Margao municipality was scheduled to take up the scientific capping of the Sonsodo site with monetary assistance from the government.
Secondly, sources said the civic body cannot go ahead with the capping of the Sonsodo site sans the mandatory nod from the Goa State Pollution Control Board.
GSPCB officials in the know say that capping of a waste dumping site is guided by a well laid down criteria, including the condition that there ought to be no habitation within 500 meters away from the site. In the case of Sonsodo, GSPCB officials said that human habitation is just a stone throw’s away and wondered whether the capping proposal would fit the bill.
