Even after green nod, Haryana’s first waste-to-energy plant hangs fire

Bijendra Ahlawat
Tribune News Service
Faridabad, August 29

The fate of the first waste-to-energy power plant of Haryana, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for which was signed over three years ago, still hangs in balance, as not much progress has been made on the ground.

TIMELINE

• June 2017: An announcement of a waste-to-energy plant to come up at Bandhwari village in three years was made. The Faridabad and Gurugram MCs signed an MoU with a private company to outsource the work of garbage collection, segregation and treatment at the dump site
• April 13, 2018: Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar laid the stone of Rs330-cr power plant at Bandhwari village on the Faridabad-Gurugram highway
• 2019: A formal clearance from the Union Ministry of Environment and Forest received, but the work on the plant has not started to date

A Municipal Corporation (MC) official said that the power plant was slated to produce 10 MW daily but the project execution had been marred with delays for various reasons, including no timely follow up. While it took 28 months to get clearance from the Union Ministry of Environment and Forest, the slow processing of garbage led to an acute shortage of space at the dumping site.

The power plant was expected to be ready by June 2019, and a project management unit had been set up to monitor the progress and compliance with the penalty clause in case of delay or violation of the norms included in the MoU, according to sources.

“The dumping site has damaged the ecology and polluted groundwater due to the constant leakage of waste residue,” said Jitender Bhadana of local NGO Save Aravallis.

The MoU agreement has a lease period of 22 years, including 18 months for the installation.

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