Dr Joe D’Souza
Panaji has been unscientifically developed to cater to the economic development of the society. A healthy environment is basic to a healthy life and as solid waste management is one amongst the many issues that are adversely affecting Panaji, it needs to be addressed on a priority basis.
When the capital city suffocated with garbage, it was dumped at various sites around Old Goa, on the Kadamba plateau, at Merces in the low-lying marshy areas and Curca. Panjimites also ignored the haphazard dumping of garbage at sites like the Campal parade ground, at Tonca, near the sewage treatment plant, the entire Patto Plaza, which was a mangrove area and the Taleigao plateau, close to the Goa University.
While dumping of garbage was being done unscientifically, the CCP decided to set up a scientific Common Solid Waste Management Plant at Bainguinim.
Interestingly, the present site for SWM was identified in 2006 and thereafter requisite finance was sanctioned to acquire the 1,70,000 sq m of land. Once the procedure was completed and the payments made in 2009, it was mandatory for the TCP Department to seal the boundaries of the site and keep a buffer zone.
Records show that CCP wrote to the TCP and the panchayats surrounding the site not to allow constructions. We were lucky to have received sanction of funds for a world-class scientifically operated SWM facility by the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission.
The subsidiary of Tetra Tech of USA, the project proponents along with the JNNURM subcommittee under late Manohar Parrikar approved the garbage treatment facility in 2010 and requested the CCP to build a boundary wall and also plant trees around the boundaries and in the No Development Buffer Zone as mandated by Central Pollution Control Board.
But the TCP ministry and the Old Goa panchayat strangely thereafter started giving licenses to mega building projects, in the vicinity of the garbage management site and into the designated buffer zone. The politicians and bureaucrats’ nexus thus delayed the setting up of
the plant.
During the period of the project finalisation I was both a consultant for the CCP as well as a Member of the sub-committee of JNNURM. The main Steering Committee under CM Digambar Kamat and Minister Joaquim Alemao approved the Tetra Tech USA proposal of SWM in which garbage was to be segregated into non-recyclables like plastics which was then to be converted into Refuge Derived Fuels; the green woody wastes and leaves of shrubs were to be converted into green fuel and the household wastes, and kitchen wastes from restaurants were marked to be converted into bio-fertilizers, compost and soil amendment additives by the world class “Windrow system of treatment”.
The Windrow technology is not a capital intensive project and the total cost of plant, machinery, laboratories only was about Rs 60 crore. The entire amount was to be borne by the UPA government at the Centre with CCP having to pay absolutely nothing. But the Digambar Kamat government fell in 2012 and Manohar Parrikar shelved almost all the then sanctioned projects under JNNURM including the SWM facility at Bainguinim.
In the meantime, on the Kadamba plateau around the SWM plant, mega builders from across India started purchasing huge tracts of land close to the site of the garbage plant between 2012 to date. The mega housing complexes like Casa Amora, Esmeralda, Navare Developers, Four Seasons Perola, Mystic Blue Kadamba, Gera, River of Joy, Raheja Corp, Viva Goa, the Healthway Hospital, Fern Kadamba, with high rise buildings started coming up rapidly converting the Kadamba plateau into an urban settlement zone from a desolate location meant for SWM only.
The builders reaped rich harvest and the neo residents of the Kadamba settlements too got homes for themselves, relatively cheap. A desolate forested land where garbage surreptitiously was even dumped in the past soon became valuable. The High Court of Bombay at Goa had already given a go-ahead signal but the laid-back residents of Panaji did nothing to impress upon the establishment for the much-needed Bainguinim treatment facility for Panjimites. Sadly Panjimites are sitting on a garbage time bomb.
It is also sad to note that the Church authorities, which consider Old Goa as a heritage site, did nothing worthy, to stop urbanization of the Kadamba plateau. Even Pandurang Madkaikar succeeded in building his controversial bungalow within the Old Goa heritage precinct.
An urban complex with hundreds of buildings and tens of thousands of residents, in itself would be enough to denotify the Old Goa heritage complex as the garbage and sewage from thousands of residents, hospitals, schools and commercial establishments would pollute and destroy the church complex. The church authorities have many questions to answer about its intents and purpose of using two sets of standards of allowing private builders to operate on one hand and prevent and obstruct a lawful and much required SWM facility much required to not only support the church ambience but the crowded Kadamba complex, which would in itself generate over 40 tonnes of garbage on a daily basis.
We Panjimites need to wake up and learn from the neo residents of Kadamba plateau how to fight for their interest. Sadly, Panjimites only cry for themselves and not for holistic and sustainable development of their city.
