Cuttack: The municipal corporation is in a quandary over its efforts to come up with more transit stations for transporting solid waste generated from the city to the dumping yard.
The project is making no headway because the civic body has not been able to isolate land for garbage transfer stations in nearly eight months now.
The civic body has a dumping 27-acre dumping yard at Chakradharpur on the southwester fringe of the municipal area. All the municipal waste is now transported to the landfill site there.
There is only one transfer station at Sati Chaura for dumping the garbage collected every day before it is transported to Chakradharpur.
Sources said the corporation had in August last year planned to come up with two or three more transit stations to create alternatives for the transit station at Sati Chaura, which becomes overloaded because of slow clearance.
Municipal commissioner Bikash Ranjan Mohapatra told The Telegraph on Saturday that three to four locations in the city would identified for the garbage transit stations.
"But we failed to proceed with building the transit stations because of stiff opposition from people staying nearby," Mohapatra said.
The overloading of garbage in the confined area at Satichaura along the ring road has been a cause for public resentment in the area.
But trouble for the civic body has compounded with a lawyer, Agasti Kanungo, and 12 others seeking intervention of the Permanent Lok Adalat bench in Cuttack.
The unpleasant smell is unbearable, the petitioners alleged when the matter was taken up for hearing on Friday.
Taking note of it, a bench constituting of premaraj boidar (chairman) Pradip Patnaik and Tapan Mandal (both judicial members), directed the municipal commissioner to appear before it in person on April 26 and inform what steps were being taken to address the problem.
The civic body has allocated Rs 14.64 crore for three five-tonne capacity decentralised compost plants inside the city for better disposal of garbage by treating them and making compost.
The three compost plants have been planned under Swachh Bharat Mission and the first one will be set up at Chakradhapur.
Tenders have already been invited for it, a corporation official said.