File photo of workers engaged to cover Sonsodo legacy dump with tarpaulin sheets.
MARGAO
Crores of rupees have gone into the Sonsodo legacy dump clean-up operation over the last five years to rid the site of the thousands of cubic meters of waste.
After completing the remediation, the Goa Waste Management Corporation has handed over the dump yard back to the Margao Municipal Council. The moot question, however, remains unanswered and is a subject matter of debate – did the government spend crores of rupees to remediate the decades old Sonsodo dump just to keep it idle or go for urban forestry?
Or, was the clean-up operation ordered by former Chief Minster late Manohar Parrikar to reclaim the 15,000 square metres of land and re-use the same for waste management?
It’s now a year since the High Court had issued directions to the Margao Municipal Council to take a call on the setting up of the 15TPD bio-methanation plant at Sonsodo. In fact, while disposing of the PIL filed by the Citizens for Sonsodo represented by its Secretary Roque Mascarenhas, the High Court had further directed the MMC to file an affidavit in the Court on the steps initiated towards the setting up of the bio-methanation plant at Sonsodo.
While the Margao Municipal Council and the Chief Minister-headed High Powered Coordination Committee (HPCC) is yet to take a call on the setting up of a bio-methanation plant at Sonsodo, questions are raised in city circles over the Forest department’s proposal seeking land admeasuring 10,000 square metres of the legacy dump to implement the Urban Forest scheme, throwing up a question or two whether the legacy dump was cleared by spending tax payer’s money amounting to crores of rupees just to plant trees at the legacy dump site.
