In India, the Ghazipur fire was at its peak on World Earth Day 🌐
(An excavator tries to control the blaze as the fume rises from the landfill at Ghazipur, India, April 22. Image credit: Adnan Abidi/REUTERS)
When the whole world was celebrating World Earth Day on the 22nd of April, ironically our national capital saw one of the worst landfill fires recently.
The Ghazipur blaze could not have chosen a better day to remind us of our system’s failure. Existing at 213 feet, the dump is as tall as the Taj Mahal, but an ugly sight looming over nearby homes, damaging dwellers’ health.
India’s Capital has been choking on toxic fumes since Tuesday, as a thick and pungent cloud leaked from the fire at the colossal trash dump, currently holding 8.4 million tonnes of junk.
The fire was reported around 5 pm Sunday the 21st, and finally brought under control around 10 am on Tuesday, 23rd April.
How the fire was controlled?
The Ghazipur landfill fire was extinguished after 36 hours and 45 tenders, but the hazard of more blazes lingers.
Yashwant Singh Meena, Assistant Divisional Officer, of Delhi Fire Services, said that only water is not enough to control such fires.
“We were also dumping dry mud on the landfill to douse the flames. We will be keeping a few tenders on standby because such fires tend to reignite. The bottom of the pile remains active,” he explained.
By Tuesday, the fire at the capital’s largest dump had largely been put out, but people living nearby complained of throat and eye irritation due to continual acrid air.
The reason for the blaze stays unknown. Landfill blazes are often activated by flammable gasses from eroding garbage.
As mercury levels rise during New Delhi’s burning summers, the city’s landfills erupt into flames, with decaying waste raising India’s climate-heating methane gas emissions.
India builds more methane from landfills than any other nation, according to GHGSat, which controls emissions via satellites.
According to the non-profit Global Clean Air Initiative, openness to methane heightens lung diseases, causes asthma, and enhances the threat of stroke.
Apart from methane emissions, toxins have dripped into the ground, over the decades, polluting the water supply for thousands living close by.
(The toxic smoke at the Ghazipur dump in New Delhi, India, April 23, after the fire was doused. Image credit: Noemi Casandelli/CNN)
Debate to find outcomes
Over 2,300 metric tons of solid waste come at the Ghazipur landfill each day, according to a council trusted with reducing blazes there.
But authorities are striving to keep up with the surge of trash at the site, which exceeded its volume in 2002.
The board said bio-mining to pull methane had been sluggish and it was unlikely local authorities would fulfill their target of leveling the trash mountain this year.
Such blazes are seen each year from every Delhi dump location, according to the municipal corporation.
It focuses on bad governance and lack of planning, that’s bothering Delhi’s waste management infrastructure.
The absence of a concrete plan to govern the national capital’s trash is expanding fuel to such yearly fires.
Solutions to the waste problem were defined in 2019 when the Indian government approved regularizing the recycling division and launching more compost plants.
The country saw some progress, like better door-to-door junk collection and processing of waste, but India’s landfills persist to swell.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as part of his “Clean India” endeavor, has said actions are being taken to discard waste mountains and transform them into green zones.
That goal, if accomplished, could lessen some of the hardships of those living near the dump regions.
As India expects to decrease its methane output, it hasn’t joined 155 nations that have signed up to the Global Methane Pledge, a treaty to slash global emissions by at least 30% from 2020 levels by 2030.
India stressed its inability to join because most of its methane spills come from farming, some 74% from paddy crops and farm sheds but less than 15% from dumps.
On Monday, Delhi Environment Minister Gopal Rai examined a detailed report on the Ghazipur landfill blaze and asked the authorities for an action plan to prevent such episodes in the future.
The Momma Clan 
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