New Delhi: Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) has put up the environmental impact assessment (EIA) report on a proposed 30-megawatt project in northwest Delhi’s Bawana in the public domain for objections and comments from all stakeholders to pave the way for setting up a waste-to-energy plant.
Officials said a public consultation meeting will be organised at the location of the proposed plant in Bawana Sector-5 on Dec 27, where govt agencies and a concessionaire would listen to the objections of the people and reply to their queries.
Delhi currently has four functional WTE plants at Okhla, Tehkhand, Ghazipur and Bawana. The proposed plant would be the fifth in the city.
According to officials, the 30MW project, proposed on 15 acres of land, is intended to handle 3,000 tonnes of waste every day. The cost of the project is estimated to be nearly Rs 660 crore. The plant can become operational after environmental clearance is granted by the Union ministry of environment, forests and climate change (MoEFCC). A DPCC official said the findings of the public consultation meeting would be forwarded to the ministry for a final decision on granting approval to the proposed plant. Once given the green signal, Municipal Corporation of Delhi, which executing the project through Jindal Urban Waste Management (Bawana) Limited that is the concessionaire, would seek the approval of the standing committee to start work.
“We selected the agency on the basis of the lowest tariff offered for selling the electricity produced after incineration of the solid waste. After that, we shared the proposal with DERC, which gave its nod. Now, we need the approval of the standing committee, after which a purchase agreement will be signed with the concessionaire and work will start,” an official said, adding that MCD will contribute Rs 150 crore as the viability gap funding to set up the plant and the concessionaire will pay us Rs 25 lakh per acre annually as the rent for using the land according to the proposed conditions.
Waste generated from areas in north and northwest Delhi and dumped at the Bhalswa landfill will be transported to this plant once it is made operational, said an official.
The waste-to-energy plant is considered an environment-friendly alternative for managing solid waste as it reduces landfill use and harnesses energy contained in waste to produce electricity. Activists, however, have raised objections against the project, claiming that WTE plants do not follow norms and pollute the air and soil, and the authorities had chosen to replicate a harmful and unsustainable model at a time when the city was battling with toxicity and air pollution.
