the goan I network
MARGAO
Has the Margao Municipal Council and successive governments failed Madgavkars in addressing the decades-old Sonsodo garbage issue?
Call it an abject failure on part of the civic body or the state administration, it will be a decade now since the Margao Municipal Council started the annual ritual of covering the Sonsodo dump yard with tarpaulin on the orders of the High Court, but a permanent solution is still a far cry.
As the Margao Municipal Council is bracing up to cover Sonsodo’s existing waste dumping site at a whopping Rs 19-odd lakh before the onset of monsoon, inquiries have only revealed that roughly Rs one crore must have been spent on covering the dump so far.
Every monsoon the dump is covered with tarpaulin to prevent leachate from flowing down into the adjoining water bodies and drinking water wells. Besides, the Margao Municipal Council, the site was once covered with tarpaulin by Fomento and the Goa State Infrastructure Development Corporation (GSIDC) when the dump yard was in their possession.
That the Margao civic body continues the annual ritual of covering Sonsodo’s existing waste dumping site only goes to show that neither the civic body nor the state administration has been successful in finding a permanent solution till date.
And, the delay has only aggravated the problem. This is evident from the fact that the annual expenditure of covering the dump yard with tarpaulin has only increased with the dump yard increasing in size very year.
That it will cost the civic body Rs 19-odd lakh to cover the dump yard this year is an indication that though the size of the Sonsodo site has remained the same, there’s a vertical rise in the dump yard over the years.
Around a decade ago, the Margao civic body had adopted a resolution to cap the existing Sonsodo site on the lines of Gorai-Mumbai, but the project was given a decent burial after the Goa State Pollution Control Board (GSPCB) expressed strong reservations about the proposal.
The GSPCB had contended that the MMC would lose the existing Sonsodo land forever in the event the site is capped, while arguing that bio-mining of the decade-old waste will help the civic body in reclaiming the land for future use.
Incidentally, when the coalition government headed by former Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar assumed office post-2017 Assembly
election, the government had roped in GSIDC at Sonsodo to clear the dump yard by using bio-mining.
While the GSIDC contractor had cleared a significant portion of the existing waste via bio-mining, the exercise was discontinued after the government realized that the dumping of fresh waste was not serving any purpose. The Sonsodo waste dumping site was first capped around 10 years ago in 2009. The site was then capped by the civic body on the orders of the
High Court.
Sources in the know say it had cost the civic body Rs 17.5 lakh in 2009 to cover the site and since then the municipality has been carrying out the annual ritual of covering the dump yard.
