BMC's water-to-energy plant on hold

Mumbai: The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC)’s plans to set up a waste-to-energy plant at Dadar have failed due to the reluctance of its own department to provide land for the project.

The civic body has now started looking for an alternative place for the project.

According to officials, BMC’s environment department had planned to set up a waste-to-energy plant by using wet waste produced at the Meenatai Thackeray Flower market in Dadar. The proposed plant would have treated 10 tonnes of wet waste to generate 800 units of electricity every day.

The plant was expected to come up in the land belonging to civic sewage operations department located behind the market.

The BMC had planned to supply the energy generated to the Pramod Mahajan Udyan, the flower market, the fish market, the toilets and sewage treatment plant in Dadar.

The project would have helped generating power by a non-traditional method. It would have also led to saving expenditure on electricity, said civic officials.

However, the sewage operations department turned down the demand to provide its land saying that it is necessary for its own projects in the future and therefore should not be used for any other project..

“Though we have scrapped the idea of setting up the project at the proposed site belonging to the sewage operations department, the search for an alternative place is on. Once it is available, the waste-to-energy plant will be built there,” said a senior civic official.