NEW DELHI: One of Delhi’s three garbage mountains — the Okhla landfill — is supposed to be flattened in the next four months. But where is the waste going? In an open piece of land nearly 10km away, a spot check by TOI shows.The dumping ground is a few hundred metres from the Yamuna, and close to Madanpur Khadar Extension in southeast Delhi. This indiscriminate dumping is effectively shifting the crisis rather than resolving it.TOI visited the Okhla landfill site on Tuesday and followed loaded trucks that left the facility. From the landfill site, through Tughlaqabad and Badarpur, the trucks entered a muddy path taking off from the Jaitpur-Pushta road, finally reaching a barren piece of land. Truck after truck emptied soil littered with polyethene bags, clothes, glass and cement blocks. A road roller and three earthmovers were also present at the site, along with a group of men. The road roller was levelling the dumped garbage.
‘Refuse-derived material being transported, dumped at designated sites with permission’
As trucks navigated the muddy terrain, the area was covered in slush and dust. The stench of garbage was unmistakable.Within 40 minutes, over 20 truckloads of garbage were dumped in the open ground.As trucks rolled by, an elderly couple sat at the edge of the site. The 83-year-old man, a resident of a nearby JJ cluster colony, said they visit the area daily to sift through the garbage, searching for small pieces of iron to sell as scrap.“We don’t know where these trucks are coming from, but they arrive regularly and we come here to salvage whatever we can,” said the man, a migrant from Bihar.The TOI spot check shows that the task of flattening Delhi’s landfills is now throwing up its own challenges.Delhi has three landfill sites — Okhla, Bhalswa and Ghazipur — and the deadline to clear them is fast approaching. The deadline for Okhla is July 2026, followed by Bhalswa in Dec 2026 and Ghazipur in Dec 2027.At present, the Okhla landfill has around 23 lakh metric tonnes of garbage. Of this, nearly 9 lakh metric tonnes is legacy waste which was dumped over two to three years ago. The remaining 14 lakh metric tonnes has been dumped in recent years.According to recent data shared by Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), the site processes nearly 6,300 tonnes of waste per day. Around 3,000 to 3,500 tonnes of fresh waste reaches the landfill every day.According to official data, a volumetric assessment conducted through drones in June 2022 estimated that the landfill had about 45 lakh metric tonnes of unsegregated waste. Since July 2022, approximately 34.2 lakh metric tonnes has been added.When asked about trucks dumping waste near Madanpur Khadar Extension, MCD did not provide an official response.A senior official, on condition of anonymity, however, denied that they had any information about waste being dumped in an unauthorised location. He said that refusederived material is being transported and dumped at designated sites with due permission. “The material is being sent only to two designated locations,” he added.Explaining how garbage in landfill sites is processed, the official said biomining produces three main outputs.“First is RDF (refuse-derived fuel), which mainly consists of plastics and is sent to cement industries, including plants in Chittorgarh and paper mills in Muzaffarnagar. Second is construction and demolition-like material. Third is the inert black soil, which has no calorific value and cannot catch fire. This is usually used to fill lowlying areas,” he said.Inert black soil is not supposed to have any remnants of garbage like metals, plastic or cloth. It is treated and non-toxic.The official added that Ok-hla has two designated dumping sites. “Since 2022, nearly 90% of black soil — about 20 lakh metric tonnes — has been sent to the NTPC Eco Park in Badarpur, with all necessary permissions. However, that site is now nearing capacity, with space left for only 40,000 to 50,000 metric tonnes. We can no longer send waste there, so alternative low-lying sites are being used,” he said. The second site is at the now-defunct Badarpur power plant.Another official, however, said no large-scale dumping was taking place outside designated areas. “Okhla’s byproducts are not meant to be transported to Khadar. If anything like that is happening, strict action will be taken,” he said.This is not the first time that garbage from landfill sites has been dumped close to residential areas. TOI had reported in Jan that unremediated water from a nearby landfill site was being dumped in the low-lying areas of Kirari to deal with the issue of sewage backflow and waterlogging.
