Construction of waste-to-energy plant at Bandhwari to begin today

Gurugram: The construction of A waste-to-energy (WTE) plant at Bandhwari will begin on Friday, officials said. The construction will be carried out by Ecogreen Energy, a concessionaire of the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG), officials added.

Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar had laid the foundation stone for the WTE plant at Bandhwari on December 10 last year. The project will be completed within two years and is likely to be operational in 2024.

The WTE plant will have a capacity of producing 25 megawatts of energy on a daily basis and will have two boilers, each with a processing capacity of 750 tonnes per day, officials said.

Sanjay Sharma, deputy chief executive officer, Ecogreen Energy, said that the project was long-awaited and there has been a delay in starting the construction work due to the non-clearance of legacy waste at the site.

“The company signed a concession agreement with the Haryana government in August 2017 for municipal solid waste management for setting up of a 15MW waste-to-energy power plant in Bandhwari,” Sharma said.

MCG joint commissioner Naresh Kumar said that on an average, the two cities of Faridabad and Gurugram generate a combined average 2,100 metric tonnes of municipal solid waste (MSW) per day. This MSW is collected by Ecogreen Energy via door-to-door collection and transported to Bandhwari landfill site.

At present, the Bandhwari landfill site has turned into a waste mountain, with an approximate height of 38 metres. “The WTE plant will abide by the Central and the State Pollution Control Board’s guidelines and SWM Rules, 2016. Under the chairmanship of P Raghvendra Rao (chairman, Haryana SPCB), a committee was constituted to discuss and work on solutions to resolve the mounting challenge of Bandhwari landfill waste mountain and disposal of fresh waste in a decentralised manner in Gurugram”, Kumar said.

“Also, it was decided that MCG must work on clearing the legacy waste in Bandhwari to provide land for Ecogreen Energy to set up the plant,” Kumar added.

Kumar said that the engineering, procurement and construction contractor has been finalised by the company and they have also set up their office at Bandhwari. Initially, a retaining wall will be built to stop sliding of legacy waste and to avoid any hindrance in the construction work.

Bandhwari is one of the largest landfills in north India and towers above the mesquite forests and surrounding Aravalli hills. It is impossible to miss the man-made mountain of garbage or the foul stench which emanates from it, as one crosses the Gurugram district border into Faridabad.

Residents from nearby areas and environmentalists have time and again alleged that the leachate and garbage from the mega dump have started affecting the ecologically sensitive Aravallis as well as pose health hazards.

On November 16, a decision was taken at a meeting chaired by the HSPCB chairman Rao, who heads a nine-member committee formed by the National Green Tribunal (NGT) to look into the problems affecting the landfill. It stated that no more waste will be dumped at the Bandhwari landfill from February 1 next year.