LWMC to set up new dump site at Lakhoder

Mehmood Booti to be turned into park.

LAHORE: The Lahore Waste Management Company is buying land near Lakhoder village for a new dump site which will be functional in about a year, The Express Tribune has learnt.

The 140-acre dump site will be almost twice the size of the Mehmood Booti landfill (79 acres), which is to be covered and turned into a park.

The Environment Protection Department granted a no-objection certificate for the new landfill site after conducting a public hearing of the Environment Impact Assessment report of the Lakhoder project two weeks ago.

The Mehmood Booti landfill stores about 11 per cent of the city’s solid waste and is running out of space, said officials. One of the reasons for this, they said, was that the Lahore Compost Company was not fulfilling a contract to pick up 1,000 tonnes of waste daily for conversion into compost. “It is only picking up around 350 tonnes a day,” they said.

Khalid Majeed, the LWMC general manager (operations), said that the public hearing was “very positive” and the 140 acre site would be made partly functional in six months. He said studies of the potential impact on soil and water in the area had been completed.

He said that once the site was fully functional, in about a year, the LWMC will advertise for international tenders to attract investment and set up a private-public partnership. “The site will be given on lease and a mechanism will be developed to use the garbage to produce electricity,” he said.

He said the site had been selected for its comfortable distance from residential areas, easy access for transporting waste and space to set up a compost plant. “It is a big, deep pit which will be suitable for dumping waste for a long time,” he said. “Besides, an integrated waste management system will be introduced which will create jobs for the villagers living nearby.”

Published in The Express Tribune, March 12^th, 2012.