A trash heap 62 meters high shows how large India’s climate challenge is

Methane leaks from Bhalswa landfill site: a story of a landmark and eye-catching district in India, revealed by GHGSat

There are more than 3,100 landfills in the country. Ghazipur is the biggest in Delhi, standing at 65 meters (213 feet), and like Bhalswa, it surpassed its waste capacity in 2002 and currently produces huge amounts of methane.

There have been 14 fires this year caused by heat and methane gas in Delhi and some of them have smoldered for weeks or months.

Some 200,000 people who live in Bhalswa can’t afford to move because the area is unsafe and they have to bathe in the polluted water.

Methane is the second most abundant greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide, but a more potent contributor to the climate crisis because methane traps more heat. India creates more methane from landfill sites than any other country, according to GHGSat, which monitors methane via satellites.

The dump site exhausted its capacity in 2002, according to a 2020 report on India’s landfills from the Center for Science and Environment (CSE), a nonprofit research agency in New Delhi, but without government standardization in recycling systems and greater industry efforts to reduce plastic consumption and production, tonnes of garbage continue to arrive at the site daily.

India says it will not join due to the fact that most of its methane emissions come from farming.

When Narayan Choudhary moved to Bhalswa in 1982, he said it was a “beautiful place.” Twelve years later, the first trash arrived at the local landfill.

In the years since, the Bhalswa dump has grown nearly as tall as the historic Taj Mahal, becoming a landmark in its own right and an eyesore that towers over surrounding homes, affecting the health of people who live there.

Choudhary suffers from chronic asthma. The April fire at Bhalswa nearly killed him, he said. “I was in terrible shape. My nose and face were swollen. He said that he was on his death bed.

A lot of people from this area protested to get rid of the waste two years ago. The municipality did not cooperate with us. The people told us things would improve in two years, but they are not happy with our situation.

“If sustained for a year, the methane leak from this landfill would have the same climate impact as annual emissions from 350,000 US cars,” said GHGSat CEO Stephane Germain.

On the limits of water taken at the Bhalswa site for human drinking, skin contact, and health use at the Ghazipur dump

According to Richa Singh from the Center for Science and Environment (CSE), the TDS of water taken near the Bhalswa site was between 3,000 and 4,000 mg/l. “This water is not only unfit for drinking but also unfit for skin contact,” she said. “So it can’t be used for purposes like bathing or cleaning of the utensils or cleaning of the clothes.”

The test results from the second lab report showed that one of the samples contained levels of total dissolved solid that were 19 times the acceptable limit for human drinking water.

The Bureau of Indian Standards sets the acceptable limit of TDS at 500 milligrams/liter, a figure roughly seen as “good” by the World Health Organization (WHO). Anything over 900 mg/l is considered “poor” by the WHO, and over 1,200 mg/l is “unacceptable.”

Dr. Nitesh Rohatgi, the senior director of medical oncology at Fortis Memorial Research Institute, Gurugram, urged the government to study the health of the local population and compare it to other areas of the city, “so that in 15 to 20 years’ time, we are not looking back and regretting that we had a higher cancer incidence, higher health hazards, higher health issues and we didn’t look back and correct them in time.”

“The water we get is contaminated, but we have to helplessly store it and use it for washing utensils, bathing and at times drinking too,” said resident Sonia Bibi, whose legs are covered in a thick, red rash.

A report released in July by a joint committee that was set up to find a way to reduce the number of fires at the Ghazipur dump says more than 2,300 tonnes of Municipal Solid Waste arrives at the site every day.

The report stated that only 300 tonnes of waste are processed and thrown away by other means. Roughly one in seven of legacy waste was bio-mined, which involved excavating, treating and possibly reuseng old rubbish.

The Municipal Corporation of Delhi deploys drones every three months to monitor the size of the trash heap and is experimenting with ways to extract methane from the trash mountain, the report said.

“No effective plans to reduce the height of the garbage mountain have been made,” the report said. It should have been known a long time ago that future dumping of garbage would be bad for the environment.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/10/india/india-bhalswa-landfill-pollution-climate-intl-hnk-dst/index.html

Observational evidence for public health violations in Kochi, an Indian city where toxic fumes are spreading ‘brightly’

CNN sent a series of questions along with the data from the water testing questionnaire to India’s Environment and Health Ministries. There has been no response from the ministries.

The state government was fined more than $100 million by the National Green Tribunal for failing to rid itself of more than 30 million metric tonnes of waste.

A vicious cycle can develop if you treat 1,000 tons of legacy and then dump 2,000 tons of fresh waste every day. It will be a never ending process,” Singh said.

Firefighters in the southern Indian city of Kochi were toiling Tuesday to control toxic fumes from spreading after a landfill burst into flames five days ago, cloaking the area in a thick haze and choking residents.

The plastic dump at Assam is growing larger by the day. “It has seen several fires over the past few years, thus polluting the air and the environment.”

It was advised to remain indoors or wear face masks if you were to head outside. Schools were closed on Monday due to the pollution.

A thick cloud of smoke and methane gas has been covering the area since the fire was largely put out, keeping visibility down and making the air smell bad.

The European Union’s landfill: The fate of the landfill and the future of the world’s most populous country, says a report

Commissioned in 2008, the landfill is spread across 16 acres, according to a 2020 report from the International Urban Cooperation, a European Union program.

The landfill receives about 100 metric tons of plastic waste each day, the study added, of which only about 1% is suitable for recycling. The remaining 99% is dumped as a heap at the site, the study said, calling it a “menace for the municipal corporation.”

Climate experts fear that time is running out as the country is expected to soon overtake China as the world’s most populous nation.