It is time Panjimites wake up and support the Baiginium mega plant which is the need of the hour
DR. JOE D’SOUZA
Let us recall and reflect upon the Panaji garbage imbroglio over the last thirty years. The garbage gauntlet seems to be an everlasting challenge for the capital city. For Panaji, governments come and go but the garbage remains forever untreated and dumped all across the city limits and way beyond too.
Panaji in reality is a fishing village and was an extension to Taleigao. Being a hamlet of Taleigao the land mass was a series of hilly slopes, and indistinct islands, used by fishermen for their
traditional fisheries in small canoes and boats.
As Panaji grew into a residential, commercial and a settlement area, the construction debris as a consequence of building activities was used to bridge the island along with other wastes; to slowly develop Panaji as a town and then into a city. Scientifically, Panaji has been drawn from the sea and with the CoP reclaiming the entire Mandovi river front, fears arise that the city will once again sink into
the sea.
The early Panjim Municipal Council used to dump wastes near Tonca, thus covering the low-lying areas, which constitute the Sewage Treatment Plant. Santa Inez creek has lost its width considerably as debris and garbage was used to reclaim the water body to make way for new constructions.
The entire Patto area and the Neogi Nagar complex stands on what was originally estuarine mangroves. Today, what the Corporation of the City of Panjim claims as “Heera Petrol Pump” garbage treatment site is in reality a very fragile and a sensitive fish breeding site with mangroves and marine biodiversity.
It was Sanjith Rodrigues and Engineer Ambe as Commissioner and Environmental Engineer respectively that allowed the dumping of household and commercial wastes to give birth to the now proudly called ‘garbage sorting centre’ for Panaji.
With the city’s garbage handling being a total disaster over the years and subsequent governments and MLAs making matters worse for Panjimites by not taking a scientific approach to Solid Waste Management, the residents of Panaji too are to be blamed for remaining in a deep slumber over the mess our city fathers; MLA’s and the Urban Development Ministers have created.
Briefly, to recall, the Panaji garbage was dumped at various locations, on what is now termed as the new Panjim to Old Goa road via the Chimbel bypass. Chimbel too was used in the nineties as a garbage dumping site.
When Dr. Carmo Pegado was the U.D. Minister he permitted the use of a quarry at Curca as a garbage dumping site, till the retaining walls gave way and the Curca fields and the people had to live together under garbage heaps and leachates.
The garbage dumping at Home science and YMCA complex at Miramar too was an acute manmade disaster. And who can ever forget the now defunct Biogas plant at Patto, which broke down the day it was inaugurated in 2008 and dismantled in 2012.
The political class and the bureaucracy in Goa do not want to ever solve the garbage issue scientifically as “Garbage Mismanagement” offer lots of incentives and money; as funds spend on waste management are never questioned or challenged, since scrutiny is time consuming.
The manpower used often has “ghost workers” and transportation cost for garbage is difficult to verify as certifying agencies are often manipulated by the political class.
Garbage frauds are the only ones that escape auditors scrunity and we never ever see any one punished in a “garbage scam”.
Finally coming to the two major issues now in the public domain is the grave issue of the CoP terminal building coming up at the Panjim jetty with restaurants, conference halls, passengers and freight transport facilities, cruise boats, casinos and vessels land for a brief stay or stop over. The sheer logistics would kill Central Panaji.
This terminal building facility has already damaged the benthic ecosystem, marine biodiversity, flow of estuarine riverine system. Flooding of Panaji and erosion of land mass due to the concrete structure in the water along with garbage generated by building facility would cause a man-made disaster, due to parking, garbage, sewage generating morbidity and poor quality of life. However 95% of Panjimites are totally oblivious of this disaster in the making.
I had earlier spelt out that the Heera facility created by massacre of mangroves and dumping of garbage at Patto is not a good garbage treatment site as it is a breeding ground for fish as well as a bus terminal with passengers, public and offices all around.
The proposal to have a biogas plant or a bio digester at the PWD facility at Tonca, which presently house the sewage Treatment plant, would be worth consideration.Many from Panjim would be unaware that the garbage dumping, sorting and treatment facility is yet another disaster in the making.
Today a Garbage Treatment facility for Panjim under scientific lines has now been now approved at Baiginium.
Panjimites must wake up and support the mega plant which could treat upto 300 tonnes of waste on a daily basis. This facility was first visualized in 2006.
The land had been acquired to the tune of 1,76,000 square meters. Sadly the then Parrikar government kept it on hold, although a plan was approved by Digamber Kamat of the Tetra Tech SWM facility from USA in 2010.
Manohar Parrikar as the Chairman of JNNURM subcommittee, neglected the project and Sanjith Rodrigues as then Commissioner gave the Tetra Tech USA a Rs 45 crore gargabe facility a decent burial to make way for a nearly Rs.400 crore SWM plant which is today run by Hindustan Solid Waste Pvt. Ltd. from New Mumbai under contract in which the Goa government pays the contractors Rs.13 lakhs
per day.
Whether Panjim will now ever see a scientific SWM facility for its waste treatment, only time
will tell.
