Mulund dump finally shuts

Mumbai: The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) finally shut down the four-decade old Mulund dumping ground on Monday, a move which has come as a huge relief to the residents of Mulund and its neighbouring areas of Thane and Bhandup,

Local residents have been fighting for years to shut down the Mulund dumping ground because of the health problems and pollution caused by it. Their efforts finally bore fruit when the BMC stopped dumping garbage on the dumping ground, which used to receive 1,500 metric tonnes (MT) of waste every day.

The garbage has now been diverted to other two dumping grounds, Deonar and Kanjurmarg.

While 1,000 MT of garbage is being taken to Deonar, around 500 MT will be dumped at Kanjurmarg. Efforts are on to divert more garbage to Kanjurmarg in the future and reduce the amount at Deonar, as the latter has already reached its full capacity.

The BMC has appointed the consortium of Prakash Constrowell Ltd, Infotech International Ltd and EB Enviro Biotech Pvt Ltd as a contractor to close down the dump site at the cost of '731 crore in a period of six years.

According to a senior civic official, a contractor has already been appointed so that the garbage at the Mulund landfill is processed. “The garbage will be segregated first into construction and debris material, and waste which can be recycled and composted.

The plan is to shut the dumping ground phasewise in six years," said the official. In the first year, processing of 11 lakh tonnes of garbage is expected to take place. After this, the garbage processing will be increased gradually with 24 lakh (18%), 38 lakh (20%), 53 lakh (22%) and 70 lakh tonnes (24%) being processed in the third, fourth, fifth and sixth year respectively.

The Mulund dumping ground, which is spread over 24 hectares of land, has been a dumping ground since 1967.  Till 2018, an estimated 7 million cubic metres of trash been dumped here.