Waste management is one of the major environmental concerns in the world. Human activities and changes in lifestyles and consumption patterns have resulted in an increase in solid waste generation rates.
All human activities produce waste. We all know that such waste may be dangerous and needs safe disposal. Industrial waste, sewage and agricultural waste pollute water, soil and air. It can also be dangerous to human beings and environment. Similarly, hospitals and other health care facilities generate lots of waste which can transmit infections, particularly HIV, Hepatitis B & C and Tetanus, to the people who handle it or come in contact with it.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday rapped the Jammu and Kashmir administration over unscientific dumping and disposal of solid waste, saying it cannot play with the lives of the people.
A bench of Justices Ajay Rastogi and C.T. Ravikumar dismissed a plea by Municipal Committee of Bandipora against imposition of environmental compensation of ₹64.21 lakh for unscientific dumping and disposal of solid waste.
“Is it the way you deal with matters? Is it the consciousness of your State? You cannot play with the lives of the people. Deposit the fine,” the bench said while dismissing the plea filed by the civic body.
The lawyer appearing for the civic body submitted that the fine was levied despite the new dumping ground being ready.
He submitted that the municipal council has taken remedial action for scientific management of solid waste.
The top court was hearing a plea filed by the Chief Executive Officer, the Municipal Council, Bandipora, Kashmir against an order of the National Green Tribunal which refused to quash the levy of the environmental compensation levied by the J-K State Pollution Control Committee.
The pollution control committee had found that the solid waste was being continuously dumped at Zalwan Nassu site in close proximity of the district headquarters Bandipora and on the catchment of Wullar lake near Zalwan Nallah in a haphazard and unscientific manner by the municipal committee.
Kashmir has limited usable land due to its mountainous terrain and almost all of it is extremely fertile because of the wide network of rivers and lakes.
Even the non-irrigated land on mountains and karewas (fertile hilly land lacustrine in nature) are suitable for agriculture due to ample rainfall. At the same time, the Valley, which accounts for the bulk of the fertile land, has witnessed tremendous urbanisation in the recent past.
Srinagar is one of the 100 fastest-urbanising cities in the world with an annual growth rate of 2.5 per cent. So, not only is finding land for dumpsites extremely difficult, waste generation is also increasing rapidly.
This explains why for the past 10 years the Srinagar Municipal Corporation has been unable to acquire 20 hectares for creating an alternate landfill site as the existing site at Achan is already overflowing.
In 2017, the then deputy chief minister Nirmal Singh announced the formation of a committee, headed by the city’s deputy commissioner, to hunt suitable land. After failing to find land within the city, they unsuccessfully tried the neighbouring Budgam district. But people there staged strong protests.
All civic work requires more investment and maintenance in the mountains due to harsh climatic conditions and limited land, and this is even more true when it comes to addressing the issue of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW). Unfortunately, in Kashmir this simple truth has been ignored. In the 2019-20 annual budget only INR 40 million (USD 564,000 ) was allocated for rural waste management in Jammu & Kashmir for 91 urban local bodies (municipal committees and councils).
“Out of the total budget allocation of INR 4.64 billion (USD 65.4 million), 80-90 % funds are for civil works by the Directorate of Urban Local Bodies and not even 15% of the budget is allocated for solid waste management (SWM). On the other hand the government claims in its action plan on SWM issued in Government Order No: 25-HUD of 2019 Dated 21.01.2019 that 5 to 25% of the budget allocation to urban local bodies is spent on waste management,” said Syed Nasarullah, legal advisor of Environmental Policy Group (EPG), a Srinagar based NGO that has filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) on inefficient solid waste management in J&K.
Agriculture landholding in Kashmir has come down drastically due to massive urbanisation. The average land holding as per 2015 agriculture census is now 0.45 hectares. Shrinking farmlands may lead to food insecurity in the future but at present it has a direct impact on management of solid waste. There are no open spaces to create scientific landfill sites across Kashmir. For the last ten years the Srinagar Municipal Corporation (SMC) has not able to acquire even 50 acres of land for creating an alternate landfill site as the existing site at Achan is already choked.
On February 15, 2017, a Srinagar-based English daily reported that there was no alternate site available for creating a new landfill. Former Deputy Chief Minister Nirmal Singh, while responding to a question from local legislator of Srinagar Mubarak Gul, said on the floor of the J&K Assembly that a committee was constituted to look for land to create a new landfill site but the committee headed by District Development Commissioner Srinagar could not find suitable land in and around Srinagar.
If drastic measures are not taken to address the issue of unscientific waste management, the Kashmir valley will turn into a trash bowl as plastic and other waste is constantly dumped into Kashmir’s water bodies like lakes, rivers, streams and wetlands. Most of the wetlands and lakes plus deep drains have become choked and this is resulting in constant waterlogging during rain and snowfall. Civic authorities who are supposed to implement MSW Rules 2016 are themselves involved in dumping municipal waste in wetlands and water bodies.
Waste management is one of the major environmental concerns in the world. Human activities and changes in lifestyles and consumption patterns have resulted in an increase in solid waste generation rates.
