Aafrin Kidwai 
Mysuru Railway Station
Mysuru City Corporation (MCC) is establishing two new solid waste treatment and recycling plants to handle city waste. The two plants will come up at Kesare and Rayanakere, as planned nearly five years ago. The plant at Kesare will have a capacity to treat and recycle 200 tonnes of waste per day while the one at Rayanakere will treat 150 tonnes per day.
MCC Commissioner Gurudutt Hegde told The Hindu that the tenders and financial bids have been cleared and the work order will be issued this month. “We expect the contractors to begin the work in the first or second week of January and it will be operational within a year’s time,” Mr. Hegde said. Apart from basic civic works, only machinery has to be installed and they were confident of making the plant operational in 2021, he said.
The city generates nearly 450 tonnes of garbage daily of which bulk of it – almost 200 tonnes – goes to the waste treatment plant at the sewage farm at Vidyaranyapuram. About 150 to 200 tonnes go to landfills and dumping sites and the rest are processed at the zero waste management facilities.
New C&D waste plant also planned in Mysuru
In addition to the two solid waste management plants, the MCC is also confident of getting the construction debris recycling plant started in 2021. The site for the proposed Construction and Debris (C&D) recycling plant has been approved at Kopplur and it will have a capacity to recycle 100 tonnes of building debris daily. In the absence of a C&D recycling plant, bulk of the construction debris is being dumped along the outer ring road.
Meanwhile, the project pertaining to clearing legacy waste of nearly 2 lakh tonnes accumulated at the Sewage Farm is going slow. While the government has cleared a bioremediation project, it wants the tenders to be split into three: transportation, treatment and processing, and waste disposal. But the authorities have appealed against it on the grounds that it is not practical and wants it to be a single tender. There are concerns that splitting a project and inviting different agencies could lead to hiccups in the smooth implementation and functioning of the project.
Picture Credit: Rameshng, Mysore railway station 10, CC BY-SA 3.0
