The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) has prepared a road map to manage the new waste mounds in Singhola and Bawana through environmentally friendly methods.
The Bawana landfill will be converted into a green mountain and the Singhola waste mound will be flattened by August through biomining.
The MCD has explained the environmentally friendly methods it plans to adopt in an affidavit filed before the National Green Tribunal (NGT), which had initiated suo motu proceedings against the emergence of the waste mounds.
Elaborating on how the landfills came into existence, the MCD said it had received a 100-acre plot in Bawana to set up a solid waste processing facility and an engineered sanitary landfill in compliance with the solid waste management rules.
The MCD received the consent to operate the landfills from the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) in October 2020. Accordingly, an engineered sanitary landfill was developed on 35 acres of land. However, the consent to operate the landfills expired in June last year and its renewal application has been pending before the DPCC since May 2024.
The MCD also informed the tribunal that as part of the concession agreement, it was obligated to turn the Bawana landfill into a “green mountain”.
The MCD said it was working on biomining and flattening of the Singhola waste mound where silt was dumped following drain clean-up.
Explaining the emergence of the Singhola landfill, the MCD said that after the collapse of the Ghazipur landfill in September 2017, the Delhi Development Authority had given around 7.2 acres to the erstwhile East Delhi Municipal Corporation at Singhola Khampur village to divert the drain silt. By July 2022, around 9 lakh metric tonnes of silt had accumulated at the site.
The MCD started biomining the silt to clear the area and create space for waste disposal on November 1, 2024.
“Around 2 lakh MT (of silt) has been biomined and disposed of from the site and complete work is targeted to be completed by August 2025,” the MCD said.