Mounting Garbage Hill Near Sainik School In Bhubaneswar Raises A Stink; Residents Say It’s Unbearable

Bhubaneswar: People passing the Temporary Transit Centre (TTC) behind Sainik School in Bhubaneswar with handkerchiefs placed over their noses to ward off the overpowering stench has become a common sight.

The foul smell emanating from the site is also troubling the residents living in nearby localities for the past few days with the waste pile-up crossing its threshold limit.

The situation here turned acute after Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) stopped transporting waste from the site to Bhuasuni dumping yard in Daruthenga. As a result, the mini dumping yard has turned into a garbage hill, leading to resentment among locals, sources said.

“It has become a perpetual problem and very difficult to live in the area because of the stench,” said Prabir Sahu, a resident.

While the stench emanating from the site is slowly making the area inhabitable, piling up of waste for a longer duration is exposing locals to serious health hazards, including skin infections and chronic diseases. The groundwater is also slowly becoming contaminated, the residents rued.

“After protests, BMC officials had promised to relocate the dumping yard in three months. Later, they asked for another six months’ time and the wait has now been extended to another 1.5 years. This is nothing but cheating,” Kartika Barik, another resident, alleged.

The same problem was reported in media in July this year and the BMC commissioner Vijay Amruta Kulange had then attributed the waste pile-up near near Sainik School TTS to attempts by the civic body to process waste at the same place after transportation of garbage to Bhuasuni was stopped. A state-of-the-art trommel machine to process solid waste was also operationalised here in August.

The situation is no different at Mancheswar, VSS Nagar, Shahid Nagar, Acharya Vihar, Damana, Chandrasekharpur, and Rangamathia areas, where the stench from the dumping yards is equally unbearable. Garbage trucks moving in these areas have further added to the woes of the residents here. And there seems to be no immediate solution in sight in the absence of adequate solid waste processing facilities in the city.

Notably, these dumping yards are operational despite Orissa High Court’s 2012 order to remove all temporary transit stations in the city.