As Mumbai struggles with its deadly post-flood outbreak of leptospirosis, there is misery on the streets because struggling civic workers are finding it hard to handle a flood of garbage. The crisis of uncollected garbage was sparked by families dumping devastated food stores, trash and household belongings, which are now in an advanced state of decay and hard to handle by a civic machinery short of staff and machinery. On Friday, a joint project of an NGO called the Green Cross, The Indian Express and the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) showed how an eco-friendly, patented and tested spray could make stagnant water and garbage not just safe but be adopted by neighbourhoods across the city. The first foray was launched in Juhu Vile-Parle Development Scheme, an area where film stars live cheek-by-jowl with the middle-class. Two auto-trailers with 750-lt tanks began the exercise in three streets—beginning with a lane close to Amitabh Bachchan’s Juhu house—spraying eight spots of uncollected, accumulated garbage. The spray’s credentials are strong: it has a US patent, and since 2003 the European Union is funding a project to treat 100 tonnes of garbage near Dublin, Ireland. It has been developed at the Bhawalkar Ecological Research Institute, Pune, by institute founder Uday Bhawalkar, awarded a Phd from IIT Powai for his work on vermiculture. ‘‘This exercise will heal the ecology and eradicate health hazards,’’ explained Shantaram Shenai of Green Cross Society. ‘‘What the spraying will do is to block the non-proteinous nitrates, the essential food of bacteria and viruses.’’ What goes into the biosanitizer? About 1 kg of fish offal (waste generated at the local fish market), fermented for eight hours, or 1 kg of calcium nitrate, added to 750 litres of water. The mixture is then added to 10 gm of biosanitizer. Once biosanitized, the garbage is safe to handle by the conservancy workers. The mixture starves germs by locking in the nutrients that they feed on in rotting garbage. The Express funded the first sanitising foray and will do so on Saturday as well. The hope is to sustain it with citizens’ contributions and take it to other parts of Mumbai. ‘‘The strategy is to rapidly train people interested in cleansing their surrounding,’’ said Shenai. ‘‘The model is available at our centre at the Andheri-Versova pumping station,’’ said Shenai. Speaking from Pune, inventor Bhawalkar said the biosanitizer could reverse a situation heading for a potential crisis. Fever toll 142 Mumbai: With 18 more deaths in Mumbai since last night, the death toll due to fever from suspected leptospirosis and other rain-related ailments in Mumbai and adjoining Thane district has increased to 142, sources said. A total of 107 persons have died of fever in Mumbai till date following the July 26 deluge, sources said. The figure of fresh admissions in Thane district was not available, sources said.
