The mere mention of Sonsodo takes one to a decades-old stinking legacy dump yard; leachate flowing down into the adjoining wells, and water bodies, leaving them contaminated; recurring fires and smoke polluting the environment et al.
Well, these perennial issues plaguing Sonsodo may soon be a thing of the past, with the Goa Waste Management Corporation (GWMC) almost completing the work of remediation of the legacy dump and is in the process of disposing of the RDF and inert from the site.
Sonsodo, however, is now besieged by a new set of issues, with the buck stopping at the Margao Municipal Council’s (MMC) doorsteps, inviting the wrath of the High Court, which has in an unprecedented action, directed the municipal body to suspend the issuance of construction licences till the next date of hearing and also got the District Collector to inspect the dump yard and file a status report.
While Sonsodo will be rid of the legacy dump by December 2023, the very waste management shed established over a decade ago to treat the daily wet waste generated in the commercial capital has now turned into a waste mound. That’s not all. Saturated to the brim, the shed plays host to fires caused by methane gas. The walls of the waste management shed have given way as the structure is saturated with waste dumped over the last three years.
Reason: The MMC has miserably failed to treat even a tonne of wet waste at the plant over the last three years, as a result of which the shed is saturated with approximately 10,000 metric tonnes of waste.
No treatment
Consider this equation: Around 30 tonnes of wet waste is generated in the commercial capital every day. But, hazard a guess how the MMC has been disposing of the daily waste over the last three years. Well, waste collected by the MMC from the households and establishments, through the two contractors at a whopping cost of over Rs five crore annually, is just dumped inside the Sonsodo shed without any treatment worth its name.
Resultantly, waste has piled up inside the shed to such an extent, a whopping 10,000 metric tonnes, as per MMC’s estimates, that the walls of the shed have collapsed and the site is generating methane gas, a cause of recurring fires and smoke.
Comes full circle
No waste treatment has taken place at the Sonsodo waste management shed since Fomento Green handed it over to the MMC in 2020. Consider this. The Goa Waste Management Corporation (GWMC) carted out piled-up waste from the Sonsodo waste management shed in 2020 at Rs 85 lakh. The GWMC had even drafted its engineer to the Sonsodo shed to help MMC treat the daily wet waste and recommended repairs of existing machinery to aid waste treatment, but in vain. Three years down the line, the situation at Sonsodo has reached full circle, with the shed saturated with wet waste, the walls collapsing and the shed prone to fire incidents.
Just imagine when Sonsodo is plagued by a grim situation when an A-Class municipal body, employing around a dozen municipal engineers and an army of workers, defaults, again and again, to treat even one tonne of wet waste at Sonsodo and finally resorting to transporting the city’s wet waste to the Saligao waste treatment plant in North Goa.
Court intervention on wet waste comes by chance
The intervention by the High Court into the burning issue of disposal of wet waste by the Margao Municipal Council (MMC) has come by chance. No doubt, the Sonsodo legacy dump was under the High Court scanner in view of a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by a local NGO, Citizens for Sonsodo, through its secretary Roque Mascarenhas.
Sources in the know say the wet waste issue came under the High Court scanner during a regular hearing of the legacy dump when the Court asked the MMC to file a status report on the wet waste management at the site and how the civic body intends to go about executing the job.
Action Plan
On April 12 last, the MMC submitted an ambitious Action Plan to the High Court, promising to resolve the entire gamut of issues plaguing Sonsodo. As part of the Action Plan, the civic body submitted a different set of timelines to resolve varied issues at the waste management shed, right from repairing the crumbled walls to constructing new sheds for the windrow composting of fresh waste. And, not to mention the disposal of the 10,000 metric tonnes of wet waste piled up inside the shed via remediation. As the shed has been engulfed by fires and smoke, the MMC promised to put in place a firefighting mechanism within a month.
It’s not out of place to mention here that when the MMC’s Action Plan promised to execute the works in a time-bound manner, the High Court bench comprising of Justice M S Sonak and Justice Valmiki Menezes accepted the statements filed by the legal counsel, asserting that the MMC will have to adhere to the timelines without any excuses.
Firefighting mechanism
As far as the fire incidents, both Justice Sonak and Justice Menezes told the Civic body to take immediate measures to set up a firefighting mechanism at Sonsodo, pointing to the several incidents of fires raging at this site in the past. “Such fires are extremely dangerous and the people from this region have suffered enough. The raging fires are a serious health hazard and therefore, the MMC should ensure that fire management arrangements are in place within one month as undertaken by them. The Assistant Engineer of MMC shall be responsible for ensuring that the fire arrangements are in place within a month from today at the site,” the High Court observed.
The MMC failed its first test in mid-May when a major fire engulfed the Sonsodo shed, but MMC’s promise to the High Court to set up a fire mechanism was nowhere in place even after the one-month timeline. The MMC was further exposed hollow after the shed was again hit by fire in June when the civic body was caught napping with no mechanism in place to contain the fire.
Why Margao municipality attracted High Court ire?
When the Margao Municipal Council (MMC) submitted an Action Plan to the High Court on April 12 last, the Court accepted the plan with an observation that the civic body will adhere to the timelines without giving any excuses, before adjourning the matter to July 10, giving three clear months to execute the plan.
Sadly, when the matter came up for hearing on July 10, the MMC approached the High Court with an application seeking further extension of its timelines to implement the Action Plan.
Making matters worse for the MMC was the damning report filed by the Goa Waste Management Corporation (GWMC), drawing the attention of the High Court to the “deplorable” conditions prevailing at Sonsodo.
The MMC has further defaulted in executing a single project at Sonsodo as mentioned in the Action Plan, leave alone completing the works. What the MMC submitted before the High Court was only a plea for extensions of the timelines armed with the decision taken by the Chief Minister Pramod Sawant-headed High Powered Coordination Committee (HPCC) to file an application for further extensions.
Taking serious cognisance of the failure in implementing the Action Plan during the three months, High Court pulled up the civic body, and in an unprecedented action told the MMC to stop issuing construction licences till the next date of hearing on July 19. The district Collector was told to inspect the situation at Sonsodo and appear before the Court with a status report.
Perhaps for the first time, the MMC Chief Officer is now required to file a daily status report to the Secretary of Urban Development. The Director of Municipal Administration Gurudas Pilarnekar has come out with a host of instructions and directions to the MMC Chief Officer for compliance, including the direction to transport the 30 tonnes of wet waste generated in the commercial capital to the Saligao plant, with the 5TPD bio-methanation plant set up the SGPDA market treating the balance wet waste.
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GWMC inspection report hammers last nail in Margao council's coffin
A damning report filed by the Goa Waste Management Corporation (GWMC) after an inspection on June 5 seemed to have finally hit the last nail in the coffin of the Margao Municipal Council as the Corporation termed the situation at Sonsodo as deplorable.
What led GWMC term
situation 'deplorable'
What took the GWMC inspection team completely aback over the situation at Sonsodo, which made the agency term the situation deplorable was the failure of the Margao Municipal Council (MMC) to restore the three-phase power connection at Sonsodo even after a period of 15 long months.
Sonsodo was hit by a fire incident on March 4, 2022, completely gutting the power transformer and other electrical equipment. Since then, the MMC has been running the operation at Sonsodo with a temporary single-phase power supply.
Sadly, the temporary single-phase supply at the Sonsodo site has also been disrupted from July 3 as the electricity cable has been found damaged.
GWMC report
“This is the most deplorable situation that the municipality is not able to restore proper three-phase connection at the facility even after a lapse of 15 months, which is essential for effectively managing the facility. The dry waste which is received at Sonsodo site is presently not baled, resulting in the formation of a dry waste dump near landfill area and baling machine shed,” the GWMC report filed in the High Court stated.
The GWMC report stated that the MMC is presently collecting about 27-32 tonnes of wet waste, of which around 8-10 tonnes is sent to the Saligao Solid Waste Management Facility of GWMC and 5 tonnes is treated at the bio-methanation plant at the SGPDA market in Margao.
“The remaining 10-15 tonnes of wet waste is dumped inside the Sonsodo waste processing shed without any proper scientific treatment. There is no permanent electricity connection at the Sonsodo site for more than one year and hence the machinery cannot be put in operation.
The report further stated that the Sonsodo waste processing shed is full of waste and sufficient area is not available for treating the daily wet waste collected by windrow composting, for want of electricity and non-working of machinery.
Further, the report stated that the MMC in its Action Plan had mentioned that the remediation of the waste dumped inside the shed shall commence by the third week of May 2023 and was to be completed by September 2023, but to date, no such remediation activity has been taken up by the municipality.
MMC now vide letter reference no MMC/Tech/G-tO8/2O23-2411077 dated 28/06/2023 has requested GWMC to take up the remediation/screening work of disposal of 10,000 MT of matured wet waste existing in the MSW shed at Sonsodo.
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Working on a plan: MMC chief officer
MARGAO
With a host of directions issued by the government on Sonsodo after the High Court pulled up the civic body, Margao Municipal Chief Officer Gaurish Sankhwalkar has said the MMC is working on a plan, both short and long-term to address the burning issues.
Having taken over the reins of office just a fortnight ago, Gaurish has got down the job of implementing measures at Sonsodo post the High Court directions.
His office has stopped issuing the construction licences as per the High Court order but is now focusing on Sonsodo with a team of municipal engineers.
“In the last two days, the MMC has transported around 27 and 28 tonnes of wet waste to Saligao by hired trucks. We have received less wet waste at Sonsodo since the waste collectors have been told to tone up segregation of waste at source,” he said.
He said around 15 tonnes of baled dry waste is in the process of being transported to the cement factories in Karnataka with the help of Goa Waste Management Corporation. “We are also thinking of sending dry waste, not baled so far, to the cement factories," he added.
He added: “The temporary power connection is in the process of being restored. The MMC has already deposited Rs 52 lakh to the Power department for a permanent connection.”
The Chief Officer said some of the works mentioned in the Action Plan submitted to the High Court have begun at Sonsodo, including the construction of the platform. “A permanent office has been set up at Sonsodo. Municipal workers are working in rotation from the office,” he added.
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Questions against dept of Urban Development
After the High Court virtually sought a government assurance that it would get the Margao Municipal Council (MMC) Action Plan at Sonsodo back on the tracks, Urban Development Director, Gurudas Pilarnekar was quick to issue directions to the civic body on how to go about the job at the waste dumping site.
Many in the Margao municipality and outside may have a question or two for the Director of Urban Development “ would the situation at Sonsodo reach such a situation if his office and government taken a call on the host of projects mooted by the MMC in mid-2022?
This question comes against the backdrop of the fact that post-visit by Waste Management Minister Atanasio Monserrate in April 2022, the MMC had sought administrative approval from the DMA for a host of projects at Sonsodo based on estimates prepared by the Goa Waste Management Corporation.
Pose a question to the Margao municipal engineers over the fate of these projects and don’t be surprised to hear a reply that proposals were never disposed of by the Urban Development department.
