They’ve lived next to Mumbai’s garbage mountain for years. Now the world is taking notice

For residents like Mane, the Kanjurmarg landfill has fundamentally altered daily life over the last fifteen years. Windows remain shut throughout the day despite Mumbai’s heat and humidity because opening them means inviting unbearable stench indoors. Evening walks are cut short once the odour intensifies after sunset. Many residents say that prolonged exposure to the smell leads to nausea, headaches, dizziness and breathing discomfort. “One evening the smell became so strong that my nose started burning and I felt dizzy,” Mane recalls. “My family told me not to step outside for several days.”

Prachi Gawande, 61, who lives nearby, says even her three-year-old spitz, Snowy, has not been spared. “Unlike humans, animals can’t express how they feel. My dog often falls sick and hides in the corner of our house. The veterinarian told us Snowy is behaving this way because of the pollutants from the landfill,” she says.

A city’s waste, a neighbourhood’s burden

Operational since 2011, the Kanjurmarg landfill processes nearly 6,100 metric tonnes of waste every day, which is roughly 86 per cent of Mumbai’s total garbage generation. Spread across 144 hectares, the site has become the city’s primary waste processing centre after older landfills at Deonar, Gorai, Mulund and Malad were gradually shut or restricted (see box).

Over time, nearly 189 lakh metric tonnes of waste have accumulated at the site, forming garbage mounds that rise up to 50 metres — nearly twice the height of the Gateway of India — more than double the permissible limit under environmental norms. The landfill today dominates the skyline of eastern Mumbai.

Yet the most troubling reality lies not in its scale, but in its proximity to human habitation. According to civic records, some residential buildings in Kannamwar Nagar stand barely 142 metres away from the landfill boundary wall, despite Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) norms mandating a buffer zone of 200 to 500 metres between waste processing facilities and residential areas. “The nearest residential cluster alone comprises 26 high-rises, each between 7 and 24 floors, housing an estimated 15,000 people, many of whom were resettled here under the state government’s slum rehabilitation scheme after 2018.

The landfill also borders the ecologically sensitive Thane Creek and mangrove ecosystems, raising additional environmental concerns. “The smell becomes strongest during the night,” says Satyadev Verma, a member of the Kannamwar Residents Association. “During monsoon, mosquitoes multiply because of the garbage, and malaria and dengue cases become common in every household.”

Satyadev Verma, a member of the Kannamwar Residents Association, at his home and in his balcony from which the Kanjurmarg landfill is visible. “The smell becomes strongest during the night” he says. (Photo Credit: Amit Bhakravarty)

The invisible threat: Methane

The crisis at Kanjurmarg is no longer restricted to odour alone. A recent report by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), classified the Kanjurmarg landfill among the world’s top 25 methane hotspot zones, drawing international attention to Mumbai’s waste problem.

Methane, a potent greenhouse gas produced by decomposing waste, is over 20 times more harmful to the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. Unlike foul odour, methane itself is invisible and odourless. “Methane is a gas that one cannot even smell to understand its presence,” Deputy Municipal Commissioner Kiran Dighavkar said. “It gets inhaled unknowingly and can severely damage the respiratory system.”

Concerned by increasing complaints from nearby residents, the Bombay High Court earlier this year appointed a monitoring committee to examine pollution and odour issues at the landfill. The committee has now recommended an urgent methane audit of the landfill and surrounding areas to identify high-emission zones and implement mitigation measures. Civic officials confirmed that the BMC has appointed the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) to conduct the audit.

Once methane hotspots are identified, officials plan to install gas catchers, which are essentially perforated pipes driven into the waste mounds that draw out methane like a straw, and pipe the captured gas directly into homes and factories to be reused as fuel.

In 2016, two years after the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) was launched, the union ministry of housing and urban affairs (MoHUA) directed all urban local bodies to clear legacy waste dumps through bioremediation or biomining, where microorganisms are used to naturally break down the waste, reducing it to inert, usable material rather than simply shifting it elsewhere.

The MoHUA has maintained that methane from landfills directly contributes to global warming and that clearing legacy waste dumps is one of the fastest ways to reduce national emissions.

Ten years on, the Kanjurmarg dumpsite continues to grow. “The contractor which is responsible for maintaining the landfill was given the work-order back in 2011 and the period of contract is valid till 2036. The SBM rules came three years after the landfill became operational and terminating the contract mid way or changing the methodology of processing waste would have resulted in breach of contract or additional cost to the civic body. Therefore, to avoid these complications, the conventional method of waste processing is being continued at the landfill,” Dighavkar told the Indian Express.

“Homes have become unlivable”

The growing crisis has repeatedly drawn sharp observations from the Bombay High Court. In recent hearings, the court described the situation around Kanjurmarg as a “situation of emergency” and acknowledged that several nearby homes had become “unlivable” because of the landfill. Judges warned authorities against turning waste management into a ‘commercial venture’ at the cost of citizens’ health.

The court’s scrutiny has also extended to the landfill’s very legality. In May last year, the HC ruled that Kanjurmarg stands on protected forest land, quashing a 2009 decision that had de-notified its forest status to allow dumping. The Supreme Court has since stayed that verdict, but the legal cloud over the site remains.

Residents say the impact stretches far beyond Kannamwar Nagar. Mahadev Sawant, who lives on the 13th floor of a residential tower in Vikhroli nearly six kilometres away, says his family often cannot open the bedroom window facing south because of the smell drifting from the landfill during the night. On one such occasion, his wife reportedly felt dizzy while doing household work, prompting the family to call both civic authorities and a doctor. “The doctor clearly told us the symptoms were linked to toxins in the air,” Sawant says.

A landfill in the middle of the city

Environmental experts argue that one of Kanjurmarg’s biggest failures lies in urban planning itself. Most landfills are typically located far outside habitation zones. But Mumbai’s rapid urban expansion transformed Kanjurmarg from a peripheral site into a densely populated urban neighbourhood.

Residents remember the area before the landfill existed — a landscape dominated by mangroves, creeks and birdlife. “Earlier this was a green belt,” says Anthony Fernandez of the Kannamwar Residents Association. “We could see flamingos and parrots near the creek. Over the years, we literally watched this waste mountain grow metre by metre.”

At the time the landfill began operations, much of the surrounding area consisted of slums and chawls. Later, many of these settlements were replaced by high-rise rehabilitation buildings under government housing schemes, bringing even larger populations into the landfill’s immediate vicinity.

Today, dozens of residential towers stand beside the dumping ground. The High Court-appointed committee compared Kanjurmarg with the Shivri waste processing facility in Lucknow and noted a crucial difference that Lucknow’s facility lies outside city limits with a two-kilometre buffer zone, while Kanjurmarg operates inside a dense urban settlement. The report observed that this proximity significantly worsens odour dispersion and reduces “community tolerance”.

Why the landfill cannot be shut

Mumbai generates over 7,000 metric tonnes of waste daily, and officials say the city lacks adequate land for a new landfill within the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. Mumbai generates over 7,000 metric tonnes of waste daily, and officials say finding an alternative is harder than it sounds. Any new site within Mumbai or Thane would simply transplant the problem, affecting a new set of residents and creating a fresh cycle of complaints and litigation.

“If a new landfill has to be identified, it would likely be 25 to 30 kilometres outside city limits,” a civic official said. “That would increase fuel consumption, manpower and logistics costs, eventually burdening taxpayers.”

The BMC also argues that the landfill was established before newer environmental guidelines under the Swachh Bharat Mission came into force. Currently, Kanjurmarg uses a bio-reactor landfill model, where moisture is used to accelerate decomposition of waste. While officials say the process is scientifically managed, it also generates methane and requires waste to remain stored in large mounds.

As a result, the garbage mountains are expected to remain unless the processing model fundamentally changes.

Searching for solutions

The High Court-appointed committee recommended methane audits, air quality monitoring stations and waste-to-energy plants for scientific waste treatment. On Wednesday, civic chief Ashwini Bhide conducted a surprise inspection at the facility, directing officials to shift waste recycling and reprocessing units to the buffer zone, strengthen real-time air quality monitoring and develop dense green belts around the landfill.

But for residents, such promises have become painfully familiar. Activists point out that similar assurances were made years ago when legal challenges against the landfill first emerged.

“Till today, most of those promises remain only on paper,” says environmental activist Stalin Dayanand of Vanashakti.