Bengaluru: Going the Mandur way, residents of HSR Layout, Somasundara Palya, Begur and surrounding areas have given an ultimatum to the BBMP. They have warned the civic agency that if more than 70 tonnes of wet waste is sent for processing to the Karnataka Compost Development Corporation (KCDC) plant in Kudlu, the residents would stop the garbage trucks from entering the plant.
More than 500 residents living in the vicinity of the garbage processing plant in Kudlu staged a massive protest in front of the KCDC plant on Saturday.
The residents urged the state government and the BBMP to ‘behave’ or shutdown the plant, which is allegedly processing around 400 tonnes of mixed waste, five times more than its actual capacity.
“We are not expecting the BBMP to shutdown the plant, but we want the agency to follow certain standard operating procedures. The court order allows the BBMP to process only 70 tonnes or an upper limit of 100 tonnes of wet waste. But nearly 400 tonnes of mixed waste is processed, violating all norms. We are against this violation,” said Ms Kavita Reddy, an activist.
She said problems like contamination of lake, emanation of foul smell and outbreak of air-borne diseases had started ever since the maintenance of the plant was handed over to BBMP from KCDC.
“Unlike KCDC officials, who followed the processing procedure, the BBMP officials are only interested in getting rid of garbage. They don’t care if the plant has turned into a landfill and they are least interested about our living conditions. They are clueless about the technical knowhow and their only objective is to remove garbage from Bengaluru’s streets. There is some serious mismatch of objectives,” she said.
A protest by HSR Layout, Somasunderpalya, Kudlu and Singasandra residents against the stench from Karnataka Compost Development Corporation (KCDC) plant (Photo: DC)
Bommanahalli MLA Satish Reddy, who participated in the protest, stressed that though the plant was in his constituency not even a single truck of garbage was sent to KCDC from Bommanahalli zone.
“We are processing all the garbage generated in my zone at the constituency level and there has been no need of any plant to dispose of garbage. When the High Court mandates that garbage should be treated at the constituency level, why can’t others too follow it? The government stopped sending garbage to Mandur after villagers protested. So will it listen to us now,” asked Mr Reddy.
He said that the BBMP had promised the court that it would send only vegetable and flower waste from Madiwala and K.R. Markets to the plant, but mixed waste from many zones is being processed. Mr Reddy stressed that as of now nearly 200 trucks of garbage are being sent to the plant. If it does not come down to 30 trucks, the residents would barricade the entrance to the plant, he said.
Plant was shut many times
The KCDC plant has been functioning since 1975. But due to unsuitable technology, within a year the plant was shutdown. Processing resumed after a short while with minimum quantity of garbage In 2007, the plant turned into a landfill, following the garbage crisis in Bengaluru In 2008, the Yeddyurappa government decided to shut down the plant in view of the problems caused by the plant. In 2013, however, the plant reopened, yet again as the BBMP did not find enough spots to dump garbage With Mandur landfill being shut, the BBMP had no choice but to increase the quantity of garbage sent to the plant.
