Solid waste from Ghazipur site to help make national highway

Solid waste from Ghazipur landfill site in east Delhi would be used in the construction of the Delhi-Meerut Expressway, a section of the NH-24, in a move aimed at curbing pollution in the city.

The Standing Committee of the East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC) on Wednesday approved the proposal that would pave the way for EDMC's collaboration with the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) and the Ministry of Urban Development on this project.

"70-80 per cent of the waste would be used in construction of Delhi-Meerut Expressway initially. Later, it would be used for city roads," EDMC Standing Committee Chairman Jitender Chaudhary said.

He said, as part of the tie-up, NHAI would install a unit at the site to segregate and process the garbage that would be mixed with bitumen for use in the roads.

The decision was taken after a study by Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)-Central Road Research Institute (CRRI) in this regard found the proposal positive.

Commissioned in 1984, Ghazipur landfill site is spread over nearly 30 hectares and 2,500 tonne of garbage a day is dumped there. A total of 130 lakh tonne of garbage is currently dumped at the site and average height of the dump is 50 m.

"We hope that this project would not only help cut the pollution level but also improve the look and feel of the area, as people sometimes say, the huge mountain of garbage is visible from even far-off places," Chaudhary said.

The Ghazipur site has a waste-to-energy plant that converts 2,000 tonne of garbage to 12 MW of energy, he said.

EDMC had earlier approached the NHAI to make use of waste at Ghazipur landfill site, whereupon the NHAI had commissioned analytical study through CRRI.