THE GOAN | PANAJI
Ponda is a town which is struggling to cope with managing its solid waste. The civic body here – Ponda Municipal Council – currently has a waste management plant which is too small to handle the nearly 10 tonnes of waste generated daily.
The plant has a limited capacity of treating just 1.5 tonnes per day and is managing the show only because a significant amount of the waste generated in the town is sent by PMC to the waste treatment plant at Saligao.
However, PMC chairperson, Aanand Naik, told 'The Goan' that the civic body is working on a plan to better its waste management efficiency, and the expansion of its waste treatment plant is key to these plans. "We are also working on a public awareness campaign to educate the citizens about the concept to reduce, reuse and recycle," Naik said.
Help from external sources
Ponda is surrounded by multiple industrial zones in Kundaim and elsewhere, making industrial and hazardous waste another headache for the PMC. However, in recent years, help has come in from external sources to manage this waste in the form of Ponda Envocare Limited, a special-purpose vehicle launched by a private player to manage hazardous waste from local industries.
Unfortunately, the facility is facing operational challenges, including not having enough takers and consequently receiving quantities of hazardous waste which are far below its capacity.
Goa's Science and Technology Secretary, Sanjay Goel, IAS, meanwhile, is working on a plan to break the logjam between Goa's industry players and Ponda Envocare Ltd and ensure sufficient volumes are available for optimal performance of the plant.
An estimated 75,000 metric tonnes of hazardous waste is produced annually here, but the concerned industrial players prefer to send the waste to cement plants outside the State instead of to PEL at Ponda due to pricing issues.
Help for PMC has also come from Nestlé India, which is involved in a project called 'Project Hilldaari to promote waste management and make Ponda city clean.
Biomethanation plant at Khandepar
Meanwhile, a mini-biomethanation plant at Khandepar is treating wet waste, including food, fish and vegetable waste, producing in the process biogas and organic fertiliser.
PMC set up this plant on a trial basis and has also passed a resolution to set up a 10 TPD plant. The current one has a capacity of just 0.5 TPD.
However, several citizens in Ponda expressed apprehensions over the PMC's plans to bank on the biomethanation process to manage the city's wet waste.
They cited the bad experience of Margao, where mechanical equipment problems and issues over regular maintenance and monitoring of its functioning have rendered such a plant useless.
