Residents of Howrah’s Arupara stopped vehicles from dumping waste on a ground in the neighbourhood on Wednesday morning, scuttling the Howrah Municipal Corporation’s plans to sort the waste there before shifting it to the Dhapa dumping ground in Calcutta.

Howrah generates about 600 tonnes of waste per day.

The garbage disposal at the Belgachhia waste disposal ground has been halted.

At a meeting chaired by urban development minister Firhad Hakim on Tuesday, it was decided that the waste, so far dumped at Belgachhia, will now be distributed between the disposal sites of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation and Baidyabati Municipality in Hooghly.

The recent crisis at Howrah highlights how the towns around Calcutta have failed to create an acceptable waste management mechanism.

“We sent the entire waste to Dhapa. We tried taking the waste to Arupara but failed because of the protest. I am thankful to Hakim for taking the waste from Howrah. We did not have to send any waste to Baidyabati,” said Sujoy Chakravarty, the chairperson of the board of administrators of the Howrah MunicipalCorporation.

The residents said a waste disposal ground must not be near a residential area.

“There are homes close to the site where the Howrah Municipal Corporation plans to dump the waste in Arupara, said one of the residents protesting the move.

Several roads in Howrah were also overflowing with waste on Wednesday.

Waste management experts said the crisis in Howrah was waiting to happen and showed the mismanagement in the handling of waste.

Waste segregation is hardly practised and there is almost no waste processing.

Garbage from Bidhannagar, New Town, Panihati and now Howrah is being dumped at Dhapa, which is itselfbrimming.

Metro spoke with officials of New Town Kolkata Development Authority (NKDA), Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation, Howrah Municipal Corporation and Panihati Municipality — the four municipal bodies that send their daily waste to Dhapa.

Besides NKDA, no other municipal body has waste segregation at source or waste processing plants.

Even in New Town, the segregated waste is mixed and sent to Dhapa.

“We generate 100 tonnes of solid waste every day, but only 15 per cent of it is processed. The rest gets mixed and sent to Dhapa. We have plans to set up more processing units,” said an NKDA official.

Urban development minister Hakim told Metrothat the department will setup multiple processing plants on a 10-acre plot in New Town’s Patharghata where municipal bodies surrounding Calcutta can send their waste for processing.

Waste management experts said merely “firefighting” after a crisis by asking a larger municipal corporation to take the solid waste of a smaller municipal body will not bring a long-term solution.

“Create a robust waste segregation mechanism. Process the segregated waste so that the bulk of it gets used as raw material. This will help reduce the volume of waste,” said Brajesh Dubey, a professor of civil engineering at IIT Kharagpur, who specialises in solid waste management.

“If this is not done, we have to look for a new waste disposal site after every few years,” said Dubey.