50 acres of land reclaimed from landfill site in Coimbatore under Smart City project

Coimbatore: Fifty acres of land have been reclaimed from a massive landfill site in Coimbatore through biomining and remediation being undertaken as part of a Smart City project, officials here said.

The landfill site at Vellalore, located about 12 km from the main city of Coimbatore, is spread over 654 acres, they said.

"Under phase-I of the biomining project, 9,40,044 cubic metres of old legacy waste lying in the open at the landfill site was taken up for processing. And, 97 per cent of the work under phase-I of the project has been completed, and 50 acres of the land have been reclaimed," a senior official in the Coimbatore Smart City Limited (CSCL) said.

Under the municipal limits of the Coimbatore City Municipal Corporation (CCMC), the city has a population of more than 23 lakh spread across its 100 wards and generates about 1,100 MT of solid waste daily which also consists of biodegradable waste.

Under a Smart City project, more than 18 lakh cubic metre of legacy waste lying at the Vellalore dump site is to be processed, and in the first phase, work is nearly over on the processing of 9.4 lakh cubic metres of waste.

"Biomining of the old legacy waste will be completed by August 31. For developing an eco-park on the reclaimed site, initial studies are going on and it will be started by the first week of September," CEO of Coimbatore Smart City Limited, M Prathap told PTI.

Prathap, also the Municipal Commissioner of Coimbatore, said work on the second phase of biomining will start once approval is obtained from the state government.

For the first phase of the biomining project, at an estimated cost of about Rs 60 crore, the work order to the contractor was issued in July 2020, according to information shared by the CSCL.

Senior officials of the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) recently visited the sites of various projects, including the Vellalore landfill site, being undertaken under the Smart City initiative in this industrial city of Tamil Nadu.

Baskar Srinivasan, General Manager, Coimbatore Smart City, said another 90 acres of land will be reclaimed from the Vellalore dump site after the second phase is completed.

"The proposal for the second phase was sent early this year, and it is to be carried out at an estimated cost of Rs 58 crore, under which 9,29,109 cubic metres of legacy waste will be processed. Remediation is expected to start with CSR funds soon, once approval comes," he said.

Biomining is a process by which garbage is treated with bio-organisms or natural elements like air and sunlight so that the biodegradable elements in the waste break down over time.

Landfill sites are both health hazards and sources of pollution as methane gas produced in it results in cases of fire in the dump yard too. Hence, biomining of the legacy waste at Vellalore is a key project under the Coimbatore Smart City.

"Every city selected under the Smart City Mission has their own USP, and focus areas. It's not a one-size-fits-all initiative, and each city comes up with area-based development projects to suit the aspirations of local people. The biomining of the waste at this dump yard is a step in the right direction in making a city smart and clean with smart waste management," MoHUA spokesperson Rajeev Jain said here, during his visit recently.

An engineer of the CCMC, posted at its office at Vellalore dump yard, said three or four fire incidents are reported on an average during the March-June period, and one fire tender is stationed at the site during this period, just in case a fire breaks out.

"This stationing of a fire tender also entails expenditure for the municipal corporation, and once the landfill remediation is done, it will also save financial resources," he said.

Four trommel machines are currently being used at the Vellalore dump site with a capacity to process 600 tonnes per day (for 24 hours), the engineer said, adding, 125 people, including 40 women, are currently employed at the landfill site for processing of waste.

Srinivasan said the major portion of the land at the Vellalore site was acquired in July 1997 and transferred to the corporation. The Coimbatore corporation had initially acquired this property for "sewage disposal", he added.

The city has two other dumping sites, which have been covered, and dumping doesn't happen there. The legacy waste at the Vellalore dump site is being removed also in line with the directions issued by the National Green Tribunal a few years ago to clear the site of legacy waste and ensure no open dumping, as it poses health hazards, officials said.

"Presently out of 1,100 MT of waste generated daily here, 350 MT is open dumped, 550 MT is processed by a concessionaire, 100 MT of organic waste is processed as vermicompost, while the rest 100 MT is used for micro compost and material recovery facility at ward level. Bio-methanisation plant handles 5 tonnes of organic waste and produces biogas. The energy produced is used for lighting and at crematoriums," Srinivasan said.

As part of the Smart City initiative, the CCMC also monitors all 483 garbage collection vehicles as they are geo-tagged, with monitoring being done from the Integrated Control and Command Centre (ICCC), the nerve centre of all smart operations taking place in Coimbatore, including controlling streetlights and advertisement display on screens.

The Government of India launched the Smart Cities Mission on June 25, 2015, and 100 cities have been selected for development through four rounds of competition from January 2016 to June 2018.

"An important milestone achieved in the Mission has been the operationalisation of Integrated Command and Control Centres (ICCC) in all Smart Cities. These ICCCs work as the brain and nervous system for city operations. They have led to better management of urban services in diverse fields like crime tracking, safety and security of citizens, transport management, solid waste management, water supply etc," the government informed Parliament on Thursday.