BMC issues tender to clear Deonar landfill for Dharavi rehousing

MUMBAI: The civic authorities have set in motion the process to clear a century’s solid waste from Mumbai’s oldest, and largest, dumping yard – that’s 20 million tonnes of garbage on 123 acres – so that it can house Dharavi’s slum-dwellers who are ineligible for in-situ rehabilitation.

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is finalising a tender to clear the solid waste at the Deonar dumping yard, and appoint an agency for biomining at the site. The project, which has a deadline of three years, will the cost tax payer ₹2,000 crore.

The 326 acres on which the Deonar dumping ground stands is owned by the state government, which leased it to the BMC in the 1920s to dump the city’s solid waste. As Mumbai’s population grew, so did the amount of waste it generated – currently 6,000 tonnes a day. Over time, mountains of garbage began to pile up, reaching a staggering 40 metres, roughly the height of a 13-storey building.

The 123 acres being handed over by the BMC to rehabilitate Dharavi’s slum-dwellers is part of the redevelopment of Dharavi, one of Asia’s largest slums. It is being undertaken by Navbharat Mega Developers Private Limited (NMDPL), a joint venture of the state government and the Adani Group. When the project picked up momentum last year, the question of rehabilitating Dharavi’s residents triggered an intense debate.

It was eventually decided that slum-dwellers who occupied ground-floor shanties built before January 1, 2000 would receive free housing in-situ, or within Dharavi itself. The rest would be ineligible for in-situ rehabilitation and would be offered rental housing elsewhere, at a discounted rate of ₹2.5 lakh per tenement. One of the locations earmarked for this was the Deonar landfill.

In October last year, the state cabinet gave its nod to handing over 125 acres, of the total 326 acres, of the Deonar dumping yard to NMDPL. The state also earmarked 255 acres of salt pan land at Kanjurmarg and Mulund, 140 acres of land at Madh, and 21.25 acres of land at the Kurla Dairy for Dharavi’s rental housing project.

The BMC was initially reluctant to spend such a colossal sum to clean up the Deonar dumping yard but, under pressure from the state, it relented. Municipal Commissioner Bhushan Gagrani said, “We have been directed by the government to return the land in the same condition it was in when it was originally allotted to us in the 1920s.’’

When the state first offered the Deonar landfill as a possible site to rehouse a section of Dharavi’s residents, it raised serious health concerns for its future occupants. Although the Deonar landfill was shut and operations shifted to Kanjurmarg a decade ago, it continues to spew toxic gases and discharge leachate, the liquid that leaches from mounds of waste, contaminating groundwater, surface water and the soil with toxic biological and chemical pollutants.

According to the guidelines of the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), housing, hospitals and schools cannot be constructed within a landfill site, even if the landfill is officially closed. In addition, a 100-metre no-development buffer zone must be maintained around any such site. By rehousing Dharavi’s slum-dwellers at Deonar, the state has sidestepped the guidelines and is pushing ahead with rehabilitation at the site.