Pithampur waste project gets nod

The state government has given green signal for setting up Rs 36 crore hazardous waste disposal project in the Pithampur Special Economic Zone (SEZ). With the housing and environment department issuing a notification to this effect, all the roadblocks for the project have been cleared.

Work on the project will start next week. Though the state government had some time ago given a green signal for the project in principle, approval from the housing and environment department was needed to formally start the project.

M C Ranka, managing director of the Pithampur Auto Cluster (PACPL) said that the cluster, under which the project falls, has already authorised Remki Enviro Engineers, Hyderabad, to develop the disposal site under the build, operate and transfer (BOT) scheme.

The government has already acquired a 60-acre land in the sector 2 of Pithampur and has allotted the land to the company. Construction will start within a week, officials said.

Under the BOT agreement, Remki will run the waste disposal site over a 30 year period.

The development of a waste disposal site will prove a boon for the area, as hundreds of industries in the state have been fully dependent on Gujarat for disposing of their industrial waste, because until now, there was no waste disposal site in Madhya Pradesh so far.

A precarious situation arose for the industries in the state when the Gujarat government refused to accept the waste from other states some months back.

To add insult to injury, the Supreme Court had set September 30 as the cut-off date by which, the industries should show the agreement for dumping industrial waste with any of the disposal sites. Either that or they could face the court's wrath.

In compliance with the court's order, the Pollution Control Board has slapped closure notices on several industries in the recent past.

The new waste disposal site will prove beneficial in the economical sense, as the charges will be much less when compared to that of Gujarat as the industries can avoid huge transportation charges, Ranka said.

Further on, he said that the waste disposal site will start functioning partly within three months. The first phase will be over by then.

Remki will send its tankers to the industries to lift hazardous waste from various industries.