Supreme Court paves the way for BMC to continue operations at Kanjurmarg landfill
While senior civic officials maintained that the BMC has no plans to explore alternative sites for a new dumping ground, the petitioner—who fought a 15-year-long legal battle—deemed the apex court's stay a case of 'environmental injustice'.
Of the 6,500 metric tonnes (MT) of solid waste generated in Mumbai, nearly 5,900 metric tonnes of waste is processed at the Kanjurmarg dumping ground, which is Mumbai's sole sanitary landfill (SLF) or disposal facility.
In what had nudged the BMC into a tight spot, the Bombay HC on May 2, declared a 119.91-hectare portion of the 141.77 hectare landfill at Kanjurmarg as a 'protected forest' under the forest conservation act (FCA) and forest act, quashing a 2009 notification of the state government that denotified the land parcel as a forest. The HC had granted the BMC three months to comply with the judgment.
However, amid concerns of the city coming to a standstill with the closure of the largest landfill, the BMC had filed a special leave petition (SLP) before the Supreme Court. On Friday, the SC stayed the HC order that restored the Kanjurmarg landfill's forest status.
Senior officials confirmed that the landfill will continue to cater to the city's solid waste with the BMC having no immediate plans of looking at alternative dumping sites. According to officials, for the future, the BMC has charted plans to install a 60 MW waste-to-energy plant to process dry waste at the Kanjurmarg site as well as install a 500 TPD plant for wet waste, which will generate approximately 16.25 tonnes of compressed biogas (CBG) per day.
Stalin D , director of Vanashakti who had filed four different petitions against the dumpsite, said that the Supreme Court's stay was a case of 'environmental injustice'. 'Even though their petition was readied by July 7, we found out about the SLP, which was listed for Friday, only at 3pm on Thursday, after we asked for it. While this barely left us with any time to prepare, we were ready to fight virtually. However, even then, we did not get to argue our case. The HC had extensively studied and written the judgment after 10 months of hard work. However, it wasn't even read properly before it was trashed,' said Stalin, adding, 'In such cases, the environment is the petitioner in absentia and we are just the representatives. With the SC failing to even hear us, environmental justice was buried.'
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