BMC gets land in Ambernath land marked for waste treatment in future

Mumbai: In a bid to facilitate daily waste management in the city, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has acquired a 38-hectare piece of land at Karwale Village in Ambernath.

The civic body said that the primary objective for acquiring this land is to ensure scientific treatment of waste in the future, not to use it as a landfill.

Mumbai has two waste treatment facilities, in Kanjurmarg and Deonar. Out of the two, only the Kanjurmarg facility is equipped with scientific treatment facilities, while there is no treatment facility available at the Deonar dumping ground, where the waste materials remain untreated. The city generates around 6,000 metric tonnes (MT) of waste per day, out of which, 5,500 MT goes to the Kanjurmarg facility, while 500 MT goes to the landfill in Deonar. Civic officials said that there are currently no available land parcels in the city that can be used for setting up additional waste treatment facilities in the future.

“In 2016, the Bombay High Court had ordered the state government to provide us additional land parcels to facilitate future needs of waste treatment. The state government has now allotted land to us in Ambernath, since there is hardly any space available within the boundaries of Mumbai,” said a senior civic official requesting anonymity.

The state government has allotted 38 hectares of land to the civic body, out of which 32 hectares is owned by the state, while remaining six hectares is privately owned. Civic officials said that, in June this year, a purchase notice was issued and the BMC is set to make payments for acquiring these lands from the private owners.

In 2020, the BMC proposed setting up a waste to energy plant at the Deonar landfill. The officials said that the process of issuing a work order for this project is currently underway and that this project will be ready by 2025. The officials said that after this facility is ready, the daily waste dumped over here will be treated through an incineration process which will lead to generation of 4,000 Kilowatt of electricity energy.

“After the incineration, there is residue left on the surface. Primarily we will be transporting this residue to the Ambernath plot, and in the long run we will be setting up additional waste treatment facilities over there,” the official added. According to him, this is because there is hardly any space for setting up any new facility in Mumbai to meet the future needs, since the demography of the city is “changing at an exponentially fast pace”.

“But we are emphasising on the fact that this place will not be used as a landfill because of two reasons, mainly that it is far away from Mumbai and going there to dump waste will cost a lot of fuel and, secondly, we are aiming to achieve the target of treating 100% of the daily waste generated by 2025,” the official said.