India’s ‘rubbish mountain’ may rise higher than Taj Mahal

Tribune Web Desk 
Chandigarh, June 5 

India’s largest ‘rubbish mountain’ is on its way to growing taller than the Taj Mahal in 2020. 

The Ghazipur landfill takes up more than 40 football pitches of land on the eastern edge of New Delhi, which is widely considered to be the world’s most polluted capital.

The vast dump rises by 10m every year. It’s already 65m high. At this rate, it will be taller than the iconic Taj Mahal in Agra, some 73 metres high. 

Last year, the Supreme Court had warned that red warning lights would soon have to be put on the dump to alert the passing jets.

Chitra Mukherjee, head of Chintan, an environment advocacy group, said: “It all needs to be stopped as the continuous dumping has severely polluted the air and ground water.”

The Ghazipur tip was opened in 1894, reached capacity in 2002 and has been growing ever since. With a rapidly growing population and increasing consumption this is only set to continue.

Indian cities generate 62 million tonnes of waste each year and current projections say this will increase to 165 million by 2030. 

Birds of prey, stray dogs, rats and more than 1,000 waste-pickers–-many of whom are children–comb through the 2,000 tonnes of garbage that is dumped at the landfill daily.  

"About 2,000 tonnes of garbage is dumped at Ghazipur each day," a Delhi municipal official said on condition of anonymity.

In 2018, a section of the hill collapsed in heavy rain killing two people. Dumping was banned after the deaths, but the measure lasted only a few days as the authorities could not find an alternative.