Khattar to lay foundation stone on Dec 13 for WTE plant at Gurugram’s Bandhwari

Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar will lay the foundation stone for the proposed waste to energy (WTE) plant at Bandhwari on December 13, said officials from the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) on Sunday.

The officials said that of the 10 acres of land needed for setting up the project, the MCG has so far cleared around 8.5 acres of land.

The MCG executive engineer (Swachh Bharat Mission), Sunder Sheoran, said that the civic body is in the process of clearing out legacy waste at the landfill for the remaining 1.5 acres needed for the project.

“The MCG has received a tentative programme of the chief minister, as per which he will be laying a foundation stone on December 13. Through bioremediation and by using trommel machines, we will shift some part of legacy waste to a different location within the landfill. Space for 10 acres will be created before the laying of the foundation stone and the site will be handed over to Ecogreen to start setting up the plant,” said Sheoran.

In bioremediation, microbes are used to break down waste and make them innocuous.

The agreement for starting a WTE project at the Bandhwari landfill was signed way back in August 2017 between Ecogreen, the concessionaire for the project, MCG, Municipal Corporation of Faridabad, and the Haryana government. Primarily due to the lack of space at the landfill, the project remained in limbo for the next four years.

It is not the first time that Khattar will lay a foundation stone for the project. In April 2018 too, he had laid a foundation stone for the project.

As per the release issued by the Haryana chief minister’s office (CMO) on April 13, 2018, the WTE plant will cost ₹502 crore and generate around 25 megawatts of electricity.

“The land will be handed over to Ecogreen by MCG officials on December 13 after the foundation stone is laid. Work on setting up the plant will commence on an immediate basis. Once operational, the plant will help clear legacy waste at the landfill by converting it into electricity,” said Sanjeev Sharma, spokesperson, Ecogreen.

The Bandhwari WTE will be the second such project in Haryana. In August this year, a WTE project was also launched in Sonipat.

In a bid to clear 10 acres of land for the WTE at the Bandhwari landfill, the MCG last month started transporting processed waste to the Sonipat WTE, which is 90km away, for incineration, the officials said.

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