DUMPING-GROUND.jpg

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has approached the Bombay High Court seeking permission to allow the Mulund dumping ground to function till June 2017 as they could not find a new place to dump garbage.

A division bench of Justice V.M. Kanade and Justice Swapana Joshi was hearing a PIL filed by one Sewak Trust against the BMC for not segregating the garbage into dry and wet. The petitioner also alleged that the civic body does not follow the scientific method while dumping the garbage, which adds to environmental pollution.

Earlier this week, when the petition had come up for hearing, the court had stated that all the major cities in Maharashtra are facing similar garbage dumping problem.

“Segregation of waste materials must be done from wherever the it generates. The garbage needs to be segregated in the societies. In foreign countries if societies fail to segregate waste into dry and wet, the corporation makes the societies pay a penalty,” the court had observed.

BMC’s lawyer S.U. Kamadar told the court, “If people start segregating waste before disposing it, we will be ready to collect it separately.”

The court also suggested that while giving permission to construct a building, a rule must be invoked wherein the developer would have to make arrangements for garbage segregation.

“Once societies start doing this, 80 per cent of the problem would get resolved,” said the court.

Last year, another bench of high court has asked the BMC to stop dumping garbage, collected from across the city, into the Mulund dump yard by June 2016. The court would hear the matter next on November 22.