Will KCDC plant reduce intake?

Yes, if another plant becomes functional, but residents are doubtful

If all goes well, the tonnage at the Karnataka Compost Development Corporation (KCDC) will come down to 120 tonnes from the current 180-200 tonnes per day. And the smell from the plant would be cut down once the bio-filter is operated round the clock. These are the take-aways from the meeting of the Joint Action Team (JAT) last month.

Chaired by the MD of KCDC, the others who will meet twice a month on the progress of the unit include P Manivannan (Secretary, Department of Information and Public Relations, Karnataka), BBMP Special Commissioner (Solid Waste management) Sarfaraz Khan and Veerabhadraswamy (BBMP Joint Commissioner, Bommanahalli), among others. The residents who are part of the team include Sankar, Kamesh, Ravinder, Lalithamba, Sudipan, Srinivasan, Rajesh, Meera, Kavitha and Jeevan.

The BBMP has written to Bosch for installing an air monitoring online facility. In addition, the team will create a website to publicise about all the efforts taken by them to run the plant in a professional manner. The lake development team of the BBMP has prepared a detailed project report on the development of the Somasundrapalya Lake. This water body is adjacent to the KCDC plant. A tender has been called to fully enclose the partially-enclosed plant after which the bio-filter plant is to become fully operational.

Right now, KCDC is accepting waste from eight wards of Bommanahalli assembly constituency (HSR is one among them) in addition to eight wards each from the assembly constituencies of Bangalore South and BTM Layout. Once the repair works of the Chikkanagamangala plant are complete, the waste from these two areas will be diverted, according to the authorities. That’s when the total intake will come down to 120 tonnes per day. But until that happens, the citizens and officials will get together every alternative week to fix the mess caused in the last three years.

By the middle of December, the KCDC plant is supposed to be completely enclosed. At the meeting, the residents conveyed that this will be the last opportunity for BBMP and KCDC officials to fix the plant.

A month after some resolutions were made, many things are yet to take off. There is no consensus on the clearing of the RDF debris that has become a ticking time bomb. The windrow height that currently stands at around 20 feet needs to be razed down to 4-6 feet. The buffer zone violators have not yet been issued a notice – there are atleast seven apartments, one temple and a few village houses that fall under it. The encroached lake land is yet to be returned by the KCDC. Doubts remain.

BEHAVE OR SHUT DOWN
It’s now ‘Shutdown or Behave’ for KCDC. And this is its last chance. And the residents believe that all the plant’s odour-control measures might not pan out eventually.