MARGAO
As the collapse of the Sonsodo waste treatment plant’s wall triggered panic amongst the City Fathers and Municipal babus how to dispose of the tonnes of daily garbage generated in the city, the Margao Municipal Council sent an SOS to the Goa Waste Management Corporation (GWMC) to bail out the civic body.
The Margao Municipal Council has also called for an emergency meeting of the Council on Monday to take stock of the situation and to work out a solution, both short term and long term.
Margao Municipal Chief Officer, Agnelo Fernandes dashed off two letters to Goa Waste Management Corporation Member Secretary, Levinson Martins on two counts: One, seeking permission to transport the wet waste generated in the Margao Municipal Council jurisdiction to the Cacora Municipal Solid Waste Treatment plant. Secondly, the Chief Officer has asked the GWMC to take up the work to cart away the existing waste stacked inside the waste treatment plant and remediate the same on priority.
In the letter to the GWMC Member Secretary, the Chief Officer pointed out that the Margao Municipal Council generates daily around 35-40 tonnes of wet waste within its jurisdiction. “Once the solid waste treatment plant at Cacora is functional, this Council would like to send/ transport 35-40 metric tonnes of segregated wet waste to Cacora treatment plant. Hope you will consider this request and will accept the wet waste of this Council,” Agnelo added.
In the second letter, the Chief Officer laid stress on the bio-remediation of the accumulated waste at the Sonsodo solid waste.
He pointed out that around 15,000 tonnes of wet waste has piled up inside the existing shed admeasuring 5,000 square metres at Sonsodo. “It is requested to take up treatment of the piled up wet waste in order to avoid any unavoidable accident like fire due to stacking of the wet waste and generation of combustible gases like methane gas from the wet waste,” he said, while urging the GWMC to consider the civic plea on a priority basis.
The Chief Officer told The Goan that the only option now available before the civic body is to get the GWMC to cart away the accumulated 15,000 tonnes of waste inside the plant before the onset of monsoons.
An official in the know pointed out that carting away the existing waste stacked inside the plant would make space available at the plant which will pave the way to dump fresh wet waste during the monsoon period in the event the commissioning of the Cacora plant gets delayed.
