With a ‘13-storey' mountain of waste, why Deonar dumping ground closure is a challenging task
Now, finally, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has set in motion a plan to close the site. On Wednesday, it floated a Rs 2,368-crore tender to close the site in three years.
The source of this toxic smoke is the Deonar dumping ground, where solid waste has been piled over years to form a garbage mountain that now stands as high as 40 metres (equivalent to a 13-storey building), and witnesses recurring fires.
Mumbai: The residents of localities such as Deonar, Chembur, Govandi, Shivajinagar are no stranger to plumes of black smoke raising a stink in entire neighbourhoods.
The clean-up will be a slow and gradual exercise, involving a process called bioremediation of legacy waste, mandated by the central government for clearing dumpsites.
Bioremediation uses micro-organisms or plants to break down and remove pollutants from the environment by converting them to less harmful or non-toxic forms.
Spread across 311 acres, the Deonar dumping ground began in 1927 and is the oldest operational landfill in Mumbai.
Out of the total land parcel, the state government has earmarked 124 acres for Dharavi redevelopment, while the BMC will keep 136 acres. The remaining land is marshy and unusable, said officials.
According to BMC assistant commissioner Kiran Dighavkar, who is handling this project, the site currently has 2 crore metric tonnes of waste and removing it is going to be a mammoth task.
'This is one of the largest (dumpsites) in the country. Such bioremediation projects are undertaken in the country but they are of very small scale. This is a challenging task,' Dighavkar said.
Currently, Mumbai generates 7,200 tonnes of waste daily. After Deonar closes, Kanjurmarg dumpsite, which is operational since 2009-2010, will be the only active dumpsite in the metropolis.
Deonar dump yard
The Deonar landfill is in the eastern suburbs of Mumbai. During the early 20th century, Govandi, Deonar, Shivajinagar and Mankhurd localities were open ground with a little inhabited land. However, settlements started growing in the area with time and it underwent rapid urbanisation in the 1990s.
According to the BMC data, 600 tonnes of solid waste is dumped at the site every day. This has also become a cause of air pollution and environmental hazards for residents in the vicinity.
According to BMC data, M/E Ward in the vicinity of Deonar reports low life expectancy and high tuberculosis prevalence.
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The project
During a meeting held in November 2023 between the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) and the BMC, a decision was taken to close this dumpsite by using the bioremediation method.
According to the BMC tender, the scope of the project includes bioremediation of nearly 2 crore tonnes of legacy waste—which is a mix of partially or completely decomposed biodegradable waste, plastic waste, textiles, metals, glass and other components.
This has to be excavated, segregated, processed, utilised, and disposed of. The BMC says as a process, it will introduce bio-culture for bioremediation to accelerate the decomposition of organic waste. A thorough testing of output material will be conducted to ensure environmental compliance. There will be five sets of machineries working simultaneously across the landfill.
Besides, the project involves transport of the Refuse-Derived Fuel (RDF)—a fuel produced from waste materials, primarily municipal solid waste—to cement factories or waste-to-energy plants.
The soil and other fractions would be disposed for site levelling or filling in low-lying areas in accordance with the approved environmental laws.
The project mandates sending recyclables i.e. metals, plastics to authorised recycling units.
'The project shall be executed using scientific methods, minimising environmental hazards such as methane emissions, groundwater contamination, air pollution etc. under Solid Waste Management Rules 2016 & CPCB Guidelines including all environmental protection measures,' said a BMC official.
According to Dighavkar, the process will segregate the waste by using large sieve machines and separating the fine soil and plastics and dry waste that can be reused. The plastics can be then used in cement companies as combustibles and for energy.
The Deonar dumping ground will see a total of 2,000 vehicle movements per day carrying 25,000 metric tonnes of waste processing per day.
Deonar is not the first landfill that will undergo a bioremediation. The bioremediation of the Mulund dump yard was started in 2018 when it was ordered to be shut down.
However, even seven years later, and despite having 60 lakh metric tonne waste, much less than the Deonar site, only 67 percent work is done so far, said Dighavkar.
'It still will be another year before it shuts down. Though many factors like Covid and all were in play, this can give a comparative study of how mammoth the challenge is before us,' he said. 'Deonar is an over-ambitious project considering that we can't work during the monsoon months. So, technically we have about 24 months.'
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Controversies and fire
The dump yard is infamous for its recurring fires. Major fire incidents were reported between January 2015 and March 2016 at Deonar. In 2016, the fire raged on for five days, causing BMC schools in the area to be shut down. People in the nearby localities were having difficulty breathing for days because of the smog and high level of particulate pollutants
Following these fires, the Bombay High court had ordered the BMC to shut down the Mulund and Deonar dump yards, observing they have reached their saturation points. At that point, the dump yard used to receive about 3,000 MT of waste daily. But the civic body got a time extension till December 2019 to shut it down.
Then again in 2018, a fire broke out in Deonar, which went on for a couple of days.
The BMC says that the civic body has been trying to find a scientific way to shut down the landfill since 2005. A couple of years ago, the BMC said it will build a waste-to-energy plant in Deonar to scientifically convert waste into energy.
The plant is supposed to process 1,800 tonnes of waste daily and generate 8 MW of electricity.
However, the plant is yet to be built and as per the civic body it is expected to be ready by October 2025. But already the residents of Govandi are up in arms against the proposed plant, saying it will emit toxic chemicals, endangering their lives.
Advocate Abid Abbas Sayyad, a resident and an activist of the Govandi-Deonar area where this project is expected to come up, told ThePrint such a project comes up normally in the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) area and not in densely populated residential areas.
'The corporation has not looked after the health hazards here. The life expectancy in Givanid is low and here tuberculosis prevalence is high. This is not good for the residents here and now they will shift Dharavi residents here too. This is not good,' he said.
Besides the concurrent fires at the site, another reason why the dumping ground became controversial is because of the state government's decision to allot it for the Dharavi redevelopment project in September, just before the assembly elections.
Opposition to the project
After Thursday's tender notice to clear up the dumping ground, the opposition MVA raised strong objections to it. 'Helping the Seth ji make a profit by dumping people in a landfill, this is truly a Kachra Seth Sarkar! The shameless Adani sarkar has got the @mybmc to float a 2368 crore rupees tender for Deonar dumping ground,' Congress Mumbai North Central MP and city Congress president Varsha Gaikwad wrote on X.
She said norms mandate that even after closing the dumping sites, human settlements should not be allowed for at least 15 years. 'The Maharashtra government will do anything to please the Seth, so what if it requires sending Dharavikars to die in a dumping ground!' Gaikwad added.
Shiv Sena (UBT) MLA Aaditya Thackeray alleged the BMC has imposed 'Adani Tax' on Mumbai in the form of 'waste management fee'.
He claimed the BMC has forcibly taken over a parcel of land in Mumbai, now linked to the Adani Group, for relocating around 50,000 residents from the Dharavi slum cluster under the redevelopment project.
He claimed the cost of cleaning and managing this land is being passed on to Mumbai residents. 'Why should Mumbai be made to pay to clean up a parcel of land snatched by the Adani Group?' Thackeray stated.
These allegations from the MVA have continued since last year, when, before the poll code of conduct kicked in, the state government allotted 1,080 acres in areas such as Kurla Dairy, Mulund, the salt pan lands, the Deonar dumping ground and Madh Island to the Adani-led Dharavi Redevelopment Project Pvt Ltd (DRPPL) to create housing for those deemed ineligible under the project.
That the land parcel falls partially on the Deonar dumping ground sparked severe criticism.
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)
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