From stench to stadium: How a Kerala civic body turned its garbage hill into a field of dreams

“We thought that at least three or four generations of Laloor would be destined to live with the waste. Many died fighting diseases caused by the toxic waste,” he says.

The I. M. Vijayan Sports Complex, named after Thrissur’s football legend I. M. Vijayan, is a multi-purpose facility that stands as a testament to a vision — building a dream from waste.

Part of a collaborative effort between the CPI(M)-led state government and the Thrissur civic body, the project, inaugurated on November 3, features badminton, volleyball and basketball courts, a tennis turf, a swimming pool and a football ground.

The makeover stemmed from an election promise by CPI leader V. S. Sunil Kumar, who contested as the LDF candidate from Thrissur in the 2016 Assembly elections.
“We had not promised a sports complex before the voters, but said that a new project would come up at the Laloor garbage ground, where fresh dumping of waste had been stopped since 2012 but legacy waste remained,” he says.

Sunil Kumar, who became agriculture minister in the 2016 LDF government, said the 2016-17 Budget had announced sports complexes in various centres with funding from the Kerala Infrastructure Investment Fund Board (KIIFB), the state agency for infrastructure development through off-budget borrowings.

“We wanted to construct one sports complex in Thrissur, and the dumping ground at Laloor was suggested for the project. The Thrissur Municipal Corporation, which owned the trenching ground, handed over the 14 acres of land for the sports complex. Now its first phase is over and we decided to name it after I. M. Vijayan, pride of Thrissur,” he says.

The Rs 59-crore first phase has an indoor stadium with a seating capacity of 5,000. It has three badminton courts and one each for volleyball and basketball. Outside, there is a football court with synthetic turf, a tennis turf, swimming pool and administrative block. Modern dressing rooms, office chambers, a VIP lounge and other basic amenities have also come up. The complex will be managed by the state’s sports and youth affairs department.

Beating the garbage problem

Since 1998, Laloor, then part of Ayyanthol panchayat, had turned into a battle zone against waste dumping as people faced hardship due to garbage — both organic and inorganic — that had accumulated over years. The agitation had drawn statewide attention several times.

In 2012, after a fire engulfed the garbage mountain and toxic fumes filled the air, the Thrissur Corporation was forced to stop fresh dumping. While legacy waste remained, the civic body launched the Laloor Model Project for solid waste management, aimed at processing waste at the source. However, it failed to take off, leaving waste across the corporation area unattended.

Congress councillor Laly James, who represented Laloor in the corporation from 2010 to 2020, said that in 2012, the corporation stopped dumping waste on the landfill in response to the protest.
“Then, the corporation set up a bio-waste plant in the city as part of decentralized management in 2013. The organic waste was converted into manure,” she says.

A game changer came in 2017 when the corporation rolled out ‘Haritha Karma Sena’ — a group of women employed by a local body for collecting non-degradable domestic waste.

Although fresh dumping stopped five years ago, legacy waste continued to pose a problem. The corporation eventually spent Rs 5 crore to remove and segregate 60,000 cubic metres of waste, clearing the area for a sports complex.

To manage waste, the corporation also has distributed bio-bins in 20,000 out of 80,000 households within the city limit, with officials saying the remaining will be covered soon.

“We have initiated steps to cover the rest of the houses for treatment of organic waste at homes. Besides, Thrissur is the only local body in Kerala where a crematorium for animals was opened as part of waste management,” P. K. Shajan, the current municipal councillor representing Laloor, says.