MARGAO
Margao Municipal Council’s lone 5TPD bio-methanation plant at the SGPDA retail market is operational again, but a host of unanswered questions have come to haunt the civic body.
While MMC engineers have confirmed that power is being now supplied to the plant via a dedicated line, no one in the civic body could satisfactorily answer how much the Municipality has earned via the sale of power to the grid till date.
That’s not all. It is also not clear how much manure has been churned by the bio-methanation plant till date and how much money has been generated till date out of the sale of the manure.
A senior engineer told The Goan that while the plant has now dedicated power supply, the Municipality has not benefitted monetarily so far as the civic body is yet to resolve the issues concerning the power supply generated by the plant.
“We have to find out how much power is being generated by the plant. The Council will have to take a call whether to sell the power to the grid or to use the same for illumination of the SGDPA market,” the engineer said.
Shadow Council for Margao convenor Savio Coutinho, however, pointed out that though the plant appears to be functioning, it is not operating to its designed capacity of 5TPD per day. He claimed the bio-methanation plant has been working below its capacity as the MMC supplies only around 2.6 tonnes of wet waste to the plant. “Common sense would suggest, that if 5 tonnes of wet waste is unavailable at the SGPDA market, then the segregated wet waste from households could well be supplied to the plant. But this is not done, and it goes to prove that the waste collection agency’s are not delivering segregated wet waste to Sonsodo shed either,” Coutinho charged.
On the generation of power, Coutinho said if this 5TPD plant is run with its actual capacity, the Council would also probably gain from the power that would be generated.
