Team Herald
MARGAO: Locals from various villages across the Nuvem constituency have come together on a common platform to reiterate their opposition to the proposed 250+ 20% TPD Solid Waste Management (SWM) plant that the State government intends to set up on the Verna plateau.
The villagers, who addressed the media on Wednesday, pointed out that since 2017, they have been opposing this SWM plant, which is slated to cater to the garbage of 39 villages and three municipalities of the entire South Goa District.
They emphasised that there is no justification for Nuvem constituency to bear the entire garbage burden of the district since decentralised garbage management is being carried out by the respective villages as mandated by the Supreme Court.
A group comprising Ramiro Mascarenhas, convenor of the ‘Concerned citizens of Nuvem constituency’, Nagoa resident John Philip Pereira, Verna Sarpanch Nazia D’Costa, Loutolim Deputy Sarpanch Celina Braganza, and many others including elected representatives, demanded that the project be scrapped as it would push the Verna plateau and its surrounding villages to the brink of disaster.
Mascarenhas slammed the Rapid Environment Impact Assessment (REIA) for having shocking discrepancies and said it was obviously prepared without even visiting the site. He gave an example of how the REIA claims that the perpendicular distance to Panaji is just 6 kms, whilst the Dabolim Airport is 20 km from the site.
He added that the REIA report has also omitted to factor in the River Sal – Goa’s only indigenous river which flows through this area. Pereira lamented that the REIA also does not specify how the 100 odd trucks or 10 trucks per hour, which will be required to transport the garbage from various locations, tearing down highways and village roads to reach the site, spewing leachate, garbage fragments and stench in the process, will be regulated and controlled.
The locals pointed out that the people of Saligao constituency are already facing similar issues and that the Saligao SWM plant is also managed by the Goa Waste Management Corporation (GWMC) that will set up the Verna SWM plant.
They also lamented that GWMC has maintained a studied silence on why Sonsoddo and Sada have become toxic and unmanageable sores upon the face of South Goa and that the Verna SWM could meet the same fate.
The villagers further criticised the abdication of responsibility of various agencies like the Water Resources and Electricity Department, Goa State Pollution Control Board (GSPCB), and the Goa Industrial Development Corporation (GIDC), which is ironically supposed to look after the safety of the community and ensure proper land use.
Recalling all the steps they have taken to fight this project and the assurances they had received that the project would not go ahead, the villagers expressed their anguish over the environment and natural resources at and around the Verna plateau being damaged to the point of saturation due to the vast number of industrial units at the Verna Industrial Estate.
