Opinion Reclaiming Deonar landfill, moving a mountain

With mounds of garbage as high as 40 metres, the Deonar landfill in Mumbai has long been one of the major sources of pollution in the city, posing an especially serious health hazard to residents of the nearby suburbs of Govandi, Mankhurd and Shivaji Nagar. Now, a waste characterisation study commissioned by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has flagged the extent of the dumping ground’s toxicity: Crucial indicators of environmental toxicology, like Biochemical Oxygen Demand, Chemical Oxygen Demand and Total Dissolved Solids in the waste and leachate (liquid that leaches out of waste piles) are four times higher than the permissible limits prescribed by the Central Pollution Control Board. The revelations give the lie to the BMC’s promise to clear piles of legacy waste within three years. They also raise serious concerns about the plan, following a controversial Maharashtra government decision in October last year, to relocate thousands to the highly polluted site as part of the proposed Dharavi Redevelopment Project.

The BMC report was commissioned in 2023 as a first step towards reclaiming the landfill. With over 20 million metric tonnes (MT) of solid waste, the Deonar dumping ground is the oldest and largest in Mumbai, operating since 1927. It remains an active landfill with around 10 per cent of the city’s waste, about 600-700 MT, making its way there every day. According to a 2024 CPCB report submitted to the National Green Tribunal, the Deonar landfill generates 6,202 kg of methane every hour, making it one of the top 22 methane hotspots in the country. The contamination caused by the leachate and the noxious fumes emanating from the dumping ground, exacerbated by the periodic fires that break out among its waste mounds, have been linked to the severely curtailed life expectancy of the area’s residents, to nearly half the national average.

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Clearing Deonar’s mountain of waste is a monumental challenge, as is the process of making the hazardous site fit for habitation. It would require much longer than the three-year timeframe set by the BMC: For comparison, the Mulund dumping ground, which the BMC began clearing in 2018, is four times smaller than the area to be cleared in Deonar, with the quantum of waste to be removed being three times less. Seven years on, only 67 per cent of the solid waste has been cleared, in only 25 acres of the 60-acre land parcel. Cleaning up and reclaiming the Deonar landfill in order to resettle people is not an exercise to be carried out in haste. The civic body must ensure the process is carried out responsibly, and the state government must reconsider its plan to rehome thousands at a hazardous site.