Solid waste plant may start operations again

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, October 19

The Bathinda Solid Waste Plant is likely to start operations again from October 21 as JITF company is expected to get the nod from the Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB) on Monday.

MCB Superintending Engineer (SE) Sandeep Gupta said, “They had convened a meeting with PPCB officials on October 17 and they said they were ready to give the consent to operate the solid waste plant and it is likely that they would issue it on Monday, so after getting the consent, the plant would start operations again”.

It is pertinent to mention that the Bathinda Solid Waste Plant was closed as the Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB) had refused to give its consent to JITF company to operate it. The PPCB had even imposed a ban on the processing of garbage and asked JITF to stop operating until it was given the consent.

It is learnt that a team of officials of the PPCB had visited the site and found many irregularities as nozzles of imported spray installed at the site to suppress the odour from going out were found to be not working, so they refused to give the consent to operate. But the company has started the maintenance work and got the non-functional nozzles changed. Even the company had also applied again for the consent and which is likely to be given on Monday.

It is worth mentioning that the plant has been closed for the past more than 10 days, as a result of which the company has not been collecting garbage. Now, around 110 tonnes of garbage collected on a daily basis in the city is being dumped in the open at the dumping site located behind the plant.

The plant was set up at a cost of Rs 28 crore on 30 acres on the Mansa-Bathinda road on the public-private partnership mode between the Municipal Corporation, Bathinda, and JITF company in 2017, where RDX and manure were prepared after reprocessing the garbage. The project was the state’s first municipal solid waste treatment plant, which was constructed after a long legal battle in the National Green Tribunal (NGT).

The PPCB had given the consent to operate the plant after checking the samples of water and air of nearby areas that this would not affect the quality of water and air of nearby areas. The permission is given for six to 12 months and after which it has to be renewed and a regular checking of air and water is being done by the PPCB.