Kochi: Twelve days after a massive fire broke out at the solid waste treatment plant at Brahmapuram, the government has declared victory over the flames, whose origins remains a mystery, and the toxic fumes which, many fear, might have slow-poisoned the city and its suburbs. The firefighters of the Fire and Rescue Services and other agencies had to toil day and night to tame the flames which played a hide-and-seek in the sprawling waste ‘dumping yard’ since March 2.  The fire may have been doused but the puzzles ignited by the flames must trouble the authorities for long. The fire breakout and the prolonged containment operation have left open the reeking secret about the utter mismanagement of Kochi’s ever-growing waste woes.

It was estimated that approximately 5.5 lakh cubic metre legacy waste – a euphemism for waste dumped in a site for years – had heaped over 40.25 acres of land at the Brahmapuram plant by 2022. How much does it weigh? No clear answer yet. The estimate was done by a drone survey conducted by the National Institute of Technology (NIT), Kozhikode. It was done before Zonta Infratech, the company at the centre of a series of controversies and political allegations after the fire breakout, was assigned the task to bio-mine the legacy waste. Biomining is an eco-friendly technology that converts old dump yard materials into reusable resources. The immeasurable legacy waste at Brahmapuram dates back to 2007, the year when the Kochi Corporation started shifting the city’s garbage to the facility. 

Biomining was warranted at the plant after the state government stepped in taking over the solid waste management at the site from the Kochi Corporation. The government had to concede that legacy waste was the major problem plaguing the site. 

Zonta started the biomining process on January 15 and the work -- of excavating, segregating, sorting, retrieving, storing, selling and diverting recoverable materials from the legacy waste as well as reclaiming the dumpsite land -- was to be finished in 18 months. As much as 28 per cent of the work was completed, as per an action taken report, dated May 13, 2022, submitted by the Kerala government before the National Green Tribunal, Southern Zone Bench, Chennai. The fire, the biggest and the longest in Brahmapuram’s infamous history of summer blazes, occurred on March 2, 2023. It is not known how much more work Zonta would have completed within the period between the nine months since the government report. Disturbing visuals from the site, of garbage mounds, apparently dating back to years, suggest that there is much more work pending than done. 

Biomining of 5,59,103 cubic metre of legacy waste, the figure in the NIT report, was being done even as windrow composting – a process of converting bio-degradable waste into manure – was progressing at a dilapidated structure in the plant. Another proposed project at the Brahmapuram facility is to set up a waste-to-energy plant, which is opposed by environmentalists for they reason it’s sheer impractical just like the idea of the plant itself.

The 12-day fire at Brahmapuram has put a question mark on the ongoing composting and biomining works as well as the future plans relating to the plant. However, the most important question remains how did Brahmapuram acquire its 5.5 lakh-cubic metre ‘legacy’? It’s, unfortunately, the legacy of sheer ill-planning, inefficiency, mismanagement and above all, unproven yet evident corruption.

From lush green Chellippadam to stinking waste yard

It all started with the Kochi Corporation buying a plot in the Vadavukode-Puthencruz panchayat for a waste disposal facility in 1998. The Corporation wanted to find a new dump yard to get rid of its waste. Before Brahmapuram, there was Cheranalloor and Willingdon Island.  At Cheranalloor, the people protested and at the island, the Navy, in 2006, revoked the permission to dump waste as the birds that fed on the garbage troubled its flights. 

The fate of Brahmapuram and its residents went for a toss the next year as the Corporation started dumping waste at the plot it owned at a paddy field known as Chellipadam. The High Court wanted the Corporation to use the facility at Brahmapuram as garbage piled in across the city. The high court on January 1, 2007 directed that “till a permanent waste disposal plant is established and made functional at Brahmapuram, the said land shall be used for dumping or storage of wastes.” “The Corporation of Kochi started dumping solid waste at Brahmapuram from the afternoon of June 30, 2007 with a convoy of 27 tipper lorries escorted by police jeeps. Nearly 30 people had to be admitted to the nearby government hospital at Vadavukode which is 11 kms away from the dumping site with complaints of headache, nausea, giddiness etc,” according to an independent fact-finding committee’s report dated July 9, 2007.

Chellipadam since then became a memory with the residents shifting out of the stinking land. 

The Kochi Corporation has been maintaining the yard without any authorisation from the Kerala State Pollution Control Board since April 30, 2010. The government agency and the NGT have pulled up the local body on multiple occasions for the blatant violation of rules at Brahmapuram.

Approximately 206 tonnes of waste is dumped at Brahmapuram a day, according to the government’s report before the NGT. It comes from Kochi Corporation, Aluva, Kalamassery, Thrikkakara, Thripunitura, Angamaly municipalities; and Cheranelloor, Vadavucode-Puthencruz and Kumbalangi panchayats. The fact that the waste is dumped unsegregated makes any kind of processing difficult and the chances of fire incidents high.

The PCB, among several other alleged offences committed by the Corporation, has slammed it for allowing other local bodies to dump waste at Brahmapuram. “You have no responsibility to cater to the need of other local bodies and that too knowingly to an unscientifically operated solid waste treatment plant. They may be allowed to use your facility only when the proposed waste to energy or other satisfactory common solid waste treatment plant is materialised,” the chief environmental engineer of the PCB had written to the Corporation secretary in May 2021. 

‘Decentralisation only solution’

Environmentalists, who have been studying the Brahmapuram fiasco for long, suggest that decentralised waste management, which has been implemented successfully in other parts of the state, is the only solution to Kochi’s waste crisis. C R Neelakandan, an engineer-turned-environmental activist is of the view that centralised waste management is not practical anywhere in Kerala. He cited reasons like the state’s semi-urban landscape, high population density and excess rainfall. “The Corporation is interested in a centralised system because it opens up avenues of corruption, especially on account of engaging private vehicles for waste movement,” he said, reiterating a charge often heard in connection with Brahmapuram. 

He was also critical of the proposed waste-to-energy plant terming it unfeasible and threatening.

Environmental activist Sridhar Radhakrishnan also called for a decentralised and progressive approach of waste management. “Processing should be done at source as far as possible. Households should adopt composting systems suitable for them. Then there can be decentralised composting systems of small size of 10-15 cents at small pockets. With this, around 65 per cent of the waste could be handled. The remaining waste could be materials like plastic and glass which can be collected and sold. The government has to formulate a modality for that. For the electronic waste which the Corporation cannot handle, the entire state has to come up with an extended producer responsibility system,” he argued.