50 acres reclaimed from Vellalore landfill in Kovai
The landfill site at Vellalore, located about 12 km from the main city of Coimbatore, is spread over 654 acres, they said.
Representative image (File)
COIMBATORE: Nearly 50 acres have been reclaimed from a massive landfill site in Coimbatore through biomining and remediation being undertaken as part of a Smart City project, officials here said.
The landfill site at Vellalore, located about 12 km from the main city of Coimbatore, is spread over 654 acres, they said.
“Under phase-I of the biomining project, 9,40,044 cubic metres of old legacy waste lying in the open at the landfill site was taken up for processing. And, 97 per cent of the work under phase-I of the project has been completed, and 50 acres of the land have been reclaimed,” a senior official in the Coimbatore Smart City Limited (CSCL) said.
Under the municipal limits of the Coimbatore City Municipal Corporation (CCMC), the city has a population of more than 23 lakh spread across its 100 wards and generates about 1,100 MT of solid waste daily, which also consists of biodegradable waste.
Under a Smart City project, more than 18 lakh cubic metre of legacy waste lying at the Vellalore dump is to be processed and in the first phase, work is nearly over on the processing of 9.4 lakh cubic metres of waste.
“Biomining of the old legacy waste will be completed by August 31. For developing an eco-park on the reclaimed site, initial studies are going on and it will be started by the first week of September,” CEO of Coimbatore Smart City Limited, M Prathap said. Prathap, also the Municipal Commissioner of Coimbatore, said work on the second phase of biomining will start once approval is obtained from the state government.
For the first phase of the biomining project, at an estimated cost of about Rs 60 crore, the work order to the contractor was issued in July 2020, according to information shared by the CSCL.
Senior officials of the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) recently visited the sites of various projects, including the Vellalore landfill site, being undertaken under the Smart City initiative in this industrial city of Tamil Nadu.
Baskar Srinivasan, General Manager, Coimbatore Smart City, said another 90 acres of land will be reclaimed from the Vellalore dump site after the second phase is completed.
