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Environment / Ecology | The ugly face of Okhla gets a green lift, landfill to be eco park -Paras Singh

The ugly face of Okhla gets a green lift, landfill to be eco park -Paras Singh

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published Published on Jun 18, 2019   modified Modified on Jun 18, 2019
-The Times of India

NEW DELHI: After years of existing as a repulsive mound of festering garbage, the landfill at Okhla has got a look that is more attractive. One face of the stabilised landfill has finally been “greened” and the capping work continues on the other sides. When the work is over, the overused landfill will get a new avatar as an ecopark.

Tufail Ahmed, the engineer in charge of the capping project, told TOI that 60% of the resurfacing and slope stabilisation work had been finished and grass has been planted over 6,000 square metres of the landfill. “We are in the process of finishing the rest of the slope stabilisation exercise, but the heat wave in the capital has slowed down the task,” said Ahmed.

In this heat, watering the greened area is a challenge. “We are using water from tankers and a nearby borewell so that the grass doesn’t die,” an official of South Delhi Municipal Corporation’s engineering department said. “For the long term, a pipeline is being laid from the Okhla waste water treatment plant, and treated effluent water will be used to maintain the greenery.”

The civic body’s department of environment management services estimates the green capping to be over soon. “The slope stabilisation work will be finished before the monsoons, while the greening will take 3-4 months from now,” an official said, happy that the landfill hasn’t seen a fire incident since last Diwali when the project began.

Former SDMC commissioner Puneet Goel had already announced that an eco-park would be developed on the site. The civic body has the option to carry out biomining, or the extraction of certain materials from the dumped garbage, to turn the site into a park. Ahmed cited the Millennium Park near Sarai Kale Khan and the spot near Indraprastha Depot that were earlier landfills as examples of a turnaround.

SDMC had consulted Sri Ram Institute of Industrial Research to analyse the area after the stabilisation process started, and its report said that the organic compounds had more or less decomposed and what remained was akin to soil. “It consists of 93.7% sand, earth, bricks, concrete, etc, and 1.97% of organic material, 3.77% plastic and 0.5% glass/metals,” the report said.

When the slope stabilisation is done, the compacted mound will have a surface area of 1.5 lakh square metres. “We will plant native Aravali species there and doob (Bermuda grass) will cover the entire area,” a horticulture officer said.

While the other two saturated landfills in Bhalswa and Ghazipur keep on growing dangerously higher, Okhla has actually reduced from a height of 58m to 38m, still as tall as a six-storey building. “The mound is expected to go down by a further 4-5 metres,” said Ahmed.

The Times of India, 16 June, 2019, please click here to access

The Times of India, 16 June, 2019, https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/the-ugly-face-of-okhla-gets-a-green-lift-landfill-to-be-eco-park/articleshow/69807063.cms?fbclid=IwAR1l-J1YASt2o9erB3e


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