The beauty of landfill park
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Dumping yards which are not in use and pose a threat to the locality can be returned to the community.
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Pallikaranai marsh, off Velachery, once a sparkling sanctuary for birds and a water recharge basin, is now a dumping yard. — Pic. by N. Balaji
LAND PATTERN usage changes over a period of time as communities grow, their needs increase and the areas occupied for both residential and commercial activity expand.
In days gone by village communities were small and their needs limited. Waste generated was generally recycled within the household and non-bio-degradable waste was then unknown. In this situation the community had little use for a dumping space and common areas available within the village or skirting it were used for communal activity — for building of temples, or in the case of larger tracts, as grazing land.
But as civilization entered the lives of the populace and the traditional self-sustaining style of living disintegrated, waste disposal became a major issue. However, this was not seriously addressed by town planners, assuming that urban planners as a breed did exist, as cities mushroomed across the country.
With no effective system of waste disposal, communities took to dumping them at available vacant lands and the civic authorities also took the same route. They transported the enormous waste generated by the residents, to what was at one time considered far off and relatively unoccupied lands. Dumping yards was the natural corollary and in most cities the rim was dotted with such garbage dumps.
Though this practice brought with it a long list of inherent problems such as ground water contamination and pollution of the neighbourhood atmosphere, the most obvious fallout was that as the city grew and these `out-of-the-way' dumping yards became a part of the suburbs, and in due course, of the city itself.
It was then that the residents and local authorities began addressing the problem. In most cases, these dumping grounds continued to invite rubbish for the simple reason that no alternative ground could be found in the vicinity to divert the city's waste. However, at least in Chennai with segregation of waste slowly catching on, dumping yards may not be a nightmare in the distant future. Most bio-degradable waste with a little effort can be turned into bio-compost and returned to the soil in the form of manure. This means that local communities and localities can create their small sites for such activities. But till such time when segregation of waste is strictly enforced and practised we need to address the problem of dump yards, both functional and defunct.
The basic premise in such issues is that as communities use vacant land for activities that are considered essential but a nuisance too such as dumping, the authorities must consider ways of returning these lands to their basic land use patterns. This again involves some effort and planning and need not be seen as a Herculean task.
For starters, dumping yards which are no longer in use and which are posing a threat to the neighbourhood can be returned to the community. The most obvious thing to do is to turn them into neighbourhood parks, more so because development activity in such areas is haphazard as tracts of agriculture land are turned into residential plots. A close look at Chennai and its suburbs will show one that parks if they exist at all are derelict and significantly encroached upon by concrete structures. Unlike New Delhi or Bangalore, Chennai has very few, and definitely not large, passive recreational sites for the public. And the city waste dumps can definitely be turned into such parks.
In Chennai, the Pallikaranai marsh is one such site that can be developed without disturbing the fragile ecology of the region and this will automatically dissuade its environs from being actively used as a dump.
In such cases, the first proactive step has to come from the residents and the civic authorities who have to stop all dumping activity. The ground which has received layers of waste, not all of them safe or bio-degradable, has to be prepared over a period, generally lasting at least two monsoons, to let all obnoxious and toxic elements be worked upon and neutralised. Land filling with debris and good top soil has to happen and leeching of the soil has to be undertaken continually. Once the authorities are convinced that the land is safe for activity, and this does not mean largescale construction (which is potentially dangerous), parks can be developed. The whole process may take a few years, but what we must remember is that we are trying to reverse a sorry state of affairs that was built over decades.
Even a smaller city like Vishakapatnam has many parks, one of which — Shivajipalem — is a waste dump transformed. We will look at this venture closely in the coming weeks.
(The author is a Chennai-based Landscape Architect and Environmental Planner.)
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