No place to dump Kihim waste

Mumbai: After 5.5 million kg of waste being colleted from  the Versova beach in 85 weeks by a city based lawyer, activists have written a letter to the chief minister requesting his personal intervention to know where and how the garbage collected by them from a public beach at Kihim should be disposed of before the monsoon rain washes it back into the sea.  

This comes after the residents who collected the 1,000 bags of garbage from the Kihim beach started looking for an approproate place to dispose it off.

These garbage bags currently lie in a private land of the woman who led the clean up drive.

Residents of Kihim Beach and Kamat Village voluntarily engaged in a clean up drive and collected about 1,000 bags of garbage from the beach in a span of three weeks.

The collected garbage mainly consists of plastic and thermocol but is yet to be segregated and disposed off at an authorised location.

Kihim beach after the clean up drive of three weeks.

“Enquiries to the Alibaug District administration and locals have confirmed that there is no official garbage disposal policy or site in Alibaug. Neither garbage collection takes place, nor is any designated area available for it. Household garbage is burnt or dumped along roadsides. The local authorities seem to be ignorant about this major issue. Many mangroves have also been destructed to make empty places for dumping garbage,” said a senior advocate and resident Sagar Patil.

“Residents of Alibaug city dump construction waste and other non-inflammable material in the city centre, next to Raigad Bazaar where mangroves have been cleared to form an open space,” Patil added.  

The beach, which suffers from regular oil spills, accumulated garbage and chemical pollution has apparently never been cleaned.

Suraiya Arte who had come to her ancestral place for summer vacation saw the poor condition of the beach initiated the clean up drive. “I have been going to the beach since childhood but had never seen the beach this dirty. So with the help of other keen locals we started cleaning the beach. It was only after cleaning the beach that I came to know there was no place to dump the collected garbage. Due to this, the sacks of garbage are still kept in my private land,” she said.