Waste disposal in Gilgit hazardous to health

GILGIT: The unscientific method of solid waste disposal in Gilgit town is posing serious threat to the environment, aquatic life and health of the residents, says a report.

According to a WWF environmentalist, the town generates around 43 tonnes of solid waste, which is disposed of in an unscientific way by the Gilgit Municipal Committee(GMC), said Farasat Ali, an  environmentalist at WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature).

Talking to The Express Tribune, Farasat Ali, said that the dumping sites for municipal solid waste were near the Gilgit River and the waste could plunge into the river anytime. “The situation warrants immediate attention before it is too late.”

Ali said that the Solid Waste Management Department of the municipal committee dumps the waste at two landfill sites – Kashirodas and Chilmisdas – which posed serious environmental threats to the nearby communities as that promoted growth of infectious diseases.

These open landfills bred vermin and soluble contaminants that were leaching into and polluting groundwater. Another product of landfills containing putrid waste was landfill gas (mostly composed of methane and carbon dioxide), which was produced as the waste decomposed. Even burning the gas was better environmentally than allowing that to escape into the atmosphere, as by burning, methane – a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide – was consumed, Ali explained.

Due to indiscriminate throwing of garbage in the city, only around 50 per cent of solid waste was collected and transported to dumping sites. The remaining waste was either burnt or remained on the streets or was thrown into the drains. That practice greatly increased environmental pollution and diseases associated with solid waste in the city, he said.

This environmentalist had conducted a detailed survey three years ago, highlighting loopholes in the system and had given recommendations to deal with the problem. He said that the present solid waste management system in place in Gilgit was based on unplanned and haphazard service delivery mechanisms. He said that the civic agency staff also lacked managerial and planning skills, leading to problems such as absence of waste management documentation, spatial disparities and ineffective resource management, waste mixing, operation and maintenance, among others.

He said that vehicles carrying waste to dump sites were open, allowing wind to spilling the waste onto roads. The garbage added to the waste by choking drains besides contaminating surface and ground water and also affected the health of the municipal committee workers.

“Solid waste management has remained a neglected urban service in Pakistan,” said the environmentalist. Since the government adopted a hands-off policy on solid waste management, declaring it a local rather than a national problem, the load on municipalities to manage solid waste was greater than their meagre resources, he said.

Disposing of waste in a landfill was the most traditional method of waste disposal in Gilgit town and it remained a common practice in most parts of the country. Historically, he said, landfills had been established in disused quarries, mining voids or burrow pits. Although, a well-run landfill could be a hygienic and relatively inexpensive method of disposing of waste materials.

Regarding the solutions, he said that technologies and management systems being used in developed countries need to be replicated.

He said landfill, incineration technologies, compaction/fragmentation, shearing, grinding, resource recovery techniques, recycling, composting and digestion, paralysis and gasification must be used to save the environment from degradation.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 28^th, 2010.