NEW DELHI: The entire area around the Ghazipur landfill site was engulfed in a thick blanket of smoke, leaving local residents struggling for clean air as the city’s biggest unengineered dumpyard caught fire yet again.
The excessive methane stored in pockets of the landfill’s older section continued to emit fumes till late Monday night. The north-westerly winds carried the smoke to the unauthorised residential areas of Gharoli, including Mulla Colony and Rajbir Colony, which bore the brunt of the fire.
“The smoke covered the entire area by early afternoon and filled our houses, leaving us with itchy eyes and breathlessness. It’s the children who suffer the most,” said Muhamad Afsal, a resident of Mulla Colony.
Santosh, a ragpicker who works around the landfill site, said she lives with her two sons in a rented shanty in Mulla Colony. She said while they are used to such conditions, it still affects their health severely.
“The whole area was filled with smoke till a few hours ago. We kept sitting away and went inside the house only later, once the winds carried it in the other direction,” Santosh said, sitting next to Kondli drain.
“Our eyes have been hurting since morning, but for people residing in Mulla Colony, the situation is even worse. The smoke was so thick there a few hours ago that it almost covered the sun,” said Neg Ram, a 70-year-old resident from Rajbir Colony.
While environment minister Gopal Rai has ordered an inquiry and assured of strict action, experts said the issue is far more complex and needs long-term solutions.
“This is not the first time that the landfill is on fire, and it won’t be the last. The landfill is unorganised and cannot tap the methane that is naturally produced, unlike in the case of engineered landfills that have pipes to tap and use methane,” said Satish Sinha from Toxic Links.
Spread over 70 acres, the Ghazipur landfill is 65 metres tall and has about 131 tonnes of waste. “It gets 2,000 MT of unsegregated waste daily because there is no alternative site. Not only fire, another issue is that there is no layer underneath the landfill, so it also ends up contaminating the groundwater,” said an EDMC official.
While the region does not have an active air quality monitoring station, the nearest station at Anand Vihar and Loni in Ghaziabad had “very poor” air quality, with “severe” PM10 and PM2.5 levels on Monday afternoon.
“Such fires affect the air quality, especially the downwind areas because the source is very toxic. The fire often occurs as rising temperature ignites the methane. It is doused using water, but that seeps in, leading to the formation of more methane. It’s a vicious circle,” said an official from DPCC.
