Trichy: The city is now a step closer to becoming dump yard-free as the city corporation has obtained administrative sanction to launch biomining project at the Ariyamangalam dump yard under the smart city mission and reclaim the 35 acres. The civic body has said that the ground works for biomining would be taken up in the next six months.The high power committee comprising senior bureaucrats which went through a proposal submitted by the corporation to carry out bio-mining at the yard has okayed the project. The civic body expects to receive the technical sanction, the other mandatory nod for any proposal under smart city mission, in two weeks from the same committee. Subsequently, a tender will be floated for identifying qualified third-party agency to execute the biomining works.“Biomining is the permanent and most appropriate solution to scrap the dump yard concept. It will take two years for us to completely reclaim the 35 acres land of the yard,” corporation commissioner N Ravichandran told TOI. One of the major challenges for the civic body now is to prevent more waste from heading to Ariyamangalam dump yard. As the micro compost centres, a decentralised waste management mechanism, have been covering only 47 of the total 65 wards now, the civic body has planned to cover all wards under micro compost centres. In these centres the degradable waste will be recycled while non-degradable waste will be sold to scrap dealers, thus ruling out the need of dump yard.“We have micro compost centres at 27 places for now and such facilities will be gradually increased to cover the entire city. By decentralising the waste processing and promoting waste recycling within households, the city does not need a dump yard,” the commissioner added. Through biomining, which is to be taken up at an estimated cost of Rs 50 crore, non-biodegradable waste will be sent to factories for being used as reusable fuel in furnaces whereas biodegradable waste will be recycled as manure.Officials said that a recent study done by NIT-Trichy on the dump yard played a key role in netting the administrative sanction for the biomining project. As per the study carried out in August by a faculty member of the civil engineering department of NIT-T, the quantity of waste present in the dump yard was estimated at 7.70 lakh cubic metres. It was 30% lower than a previous study conducted by the civic body in 2014 that estimated the waste quantity at 11 lakh cubic metres. Officials attributed the dip in waste accumulation to the civic body’s decentralised waste management plan and the recent fire accidents at the Ariyamangalam dump yard.

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