The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Landfill plan raises a stink

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jul 24, 2008
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Landfill plan raises a stink

Divya Gandhi and Raghava M.

Garbage being dumped in a quarry near Bannerghatta National Park

— Photo: K. Gopinathan

TRASH FOR FOUNDATION: A landfill near Bannergatta National Park in Bangalore.

Bangalore: Standing guard amid heaps of garbage swarming with flies, Vijay Kumar (name changed) says he has been hired by the gram panchayat to monitor the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) trucks that come here every day to dump the trash.

Landfills do not ordinarily have guards. But this one is different. This one acre dumping ground is located barely 20 metres from the eastern boundary of Bannerghatta National Park, which Forest Department officials say, is threatening the wildlife, and the Revenue Department has declared as unauthorised.

Worse, this garbage will form the foundation for one of the sites of the Government’s Ashraya housing schemes for the homeless poor.

The Bannerghatta Gram Panchayat has “asked” BBMP for the garbage, according to Madan Giri, a panchayat member.

The garbage, he says, is being used to fill a 30-foot deep abandoned quarry which is part of a three-acre site earmarked for the rehabilitation scheme.

Every day, 25 trucks offload 100 tonnes of garbage into the quarry: empty chips packets, rotting vegetables, old shoes, schoolbags and tetra packs. It has been 10 days since this exercise began and the stench is overpowering.

Permission has not been sought from the Revenue Department which owns the land, the local revenue official said.

And Range Forest Officer E. H. Satyanarayana says he is concerned both for the wildlife and for the people who live around the area.

“Wildlife, including elephants, could be poisoned by some hazardous waste that is mixed up with the organic matter,” he said.

The villages here could now be vulnerable to leopards that might be drawn out of the park to hunt the dogs which scavenge here, he said.

Mr. Satyanarayana says he is helpless. “We cannot book a case because the garbage has been dumped just outside the park and not within its boundaries.

While the Karnataka Forest Act prohibits activities such as quarrying in the buffer zone (100 metres from the Park boundary) it has no provisions to address issues of pollution or garbage in this area,” he told The Hindu.

On July 19, the Deputy Conservator of Forest, Bannerghatta, Vanashree Vipin Singh, had sent a letter to the BBMP Commissioner expressing concern over the impact of the litter on the wildlife and habitat.

She had requested the BBMP to shift the garbage site away from the National Park. BBMP Commissioner S. Subramanya said the Forest Department was at liberty “to take action if the dumping was found to be unlawful.” The site mentioned was one of nine areas allotted by the Government to the BBMP to dump garbage, he added.

While Mr. Giri insists that this exercise will be over in a week, forest officials say it will take no less than six months to fill the quarry.

The construction on the housing site will begin in a month and will house 40 families, Mr. Giri says. This can have “serious health implications,” according to officials from the Department of Urban Development. “Also, such a foundation will not be stable for construction,” the officials say.

Meanwhile, the Karnataka State Pollution Control Board will be conducting an inquiry into the waste disposal here and its possible impact on the forest and surrounding areas, says Rekha R., the board’s Regional Officer, South-2 division.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Karnataka