Residents in Kurichi and Vellalore are in trouble again
Coimbatore Corporation workers putting out the fire at the compost yard at Vellalore on Friday.Residents in Kurichi and Vellalore are in trouble again. Thick smoke from the Coimbatore Corporation’s garbage yard covered their colonies on Friday, pushing them back into a problem they had been experiencing for close to four years.Tonnes of garbage burned at the yard and the residents accused the Corporation of not providing a solution to this problem despite many representations made to it.This prompted the Kurichi-Vellalore Pollution Prevention Action Committee to state that it would go ahead with the plan for a series of agitations if the Corporation did not shift the yard by September 15.Committee secretary K.S. Mohan said that the garbage started burning on Thursday night.Thick smoke entered residential layouts and choked people. The Corporation used water jets to put out the flames. The committee said that the smoke would still come from the smouldering dumps.The fresh bout of smoke has come at a time when the committee is in no mood to accept the Corporation’s proposal for waste management at the yard. It wants the yard to be shifted and sees nothing else as a solution to the problems the residents are facing.The committee’s office-bearers walked out of a meeting the Corporation held last week to explain ‘safe’ methods of garbage disposal the civic body planned to carry out under its Rs.96-crore Integrated Solid Waste Management Programme.
The committee members argued that the storage of waste and also cow dung that would be used to turn it into manure would pose health problems. The Vellalore Town Panchayat too had expressed opposition to any waste management programme at the yard.The committee insisted that the Corporation carry out waste-to-manure projects on its lands within the city. It also wondered why the Corporation was not trying to use defunct quarries to dump non-biodegradable waste for their disposal through the landfill method.The latest fire broke out when the entire issue was still simmering. It also came in handy for the committee to step up the demand for the shifting of the yard.“There is smoke up to Nanjundapuram (more than a kilometre from the yard). This is the suffering we undergo each time the garbage is on fire“If the Corporation will use a non-polluting technology, why cannot it carry out waste management on its territory,” asks Mr. Mohan. “Now, will the waste from the town panchayats also come to this yard under a new initiative?
Mr. Mohan said he had sought to know from the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board whether it insisted on landfill and waste-to-manure being carried out only at this yard. He alleged that the Corporation had told the residents that it would have to carry out these measures only at this yard because the board refused to allow waste disposal within the city.Communist Party of India (Marxist) councillor in the Corporation C. Padmanabhan was at the yard on Friday to assess the impact of the smoke on the people. The councillor said that he would present the problems he saw at the yard before the Corporation officials.“A lot of groundwork needs to be done as the problem is massive,” Mr. Padmanabhan said.Corporation sources said the civic body sympathised with the residents, but shifting the yard was not the solution. The present yard of more than 100 acres was the best place available for safe methods of disposal. The residents should give the Corporation a chance to prove the efficacy of its planned waste management programme.
