Thiruvananthapuram\/Kochi, 8 Mar: The Kerala government on Wednesday decided that plastic will no longer be taken to the Brahmapuram waste plant where a fire, which broke out last week, is still smouldering leading to thick toxic smoke spreading out into the port-city of Kochi.
\nThe decision was taken in an emergency high-level meeting chaired by Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan in the wake of the fire at the plant, the CMO said in a statement.
\nIt was also decided in the meeting, that bio-waste will be disposed of at the source as much as possible and the window composting system for organic waste treatment will be repaired urgently, the statement said.
\nThe Chief Minister also suggested holding of meetings in which Ministers, people’s representatives, including mayors, would participate to deal with the issue of waste management and disposal, it said.
\nEarlier in the day, in the wake of the still-smouldering fire at the Brahmapuram waste plant here and the toxic smoke being generated from there, the Kerala High Court said there should be a proper waste management system in the State.
\nA bench of Justices S V Bhatti and Basant Balaji said the government should strengthen the waste segregation at source and take stringent action against those who dump garbage in public places.
\nIt further said that the entire State should be seen as one city when formulating waste disposal plans and steps should be taken on a war footing to dispose of garbage scientifically.
\nThe bench said that both short and long term plans were needed as solving the current issue would not be a permanent solution to the problem of waste disposal.
\nThe court said that there was no need to file a multi-page report and instead the government should just say exactly how it intends to implement the plans.
\nIt also called for a detailed report from the Ernakulam District Collector (DC) regarding the situation at the waste plant.
\nThe bench also said that the court intervened in the matter as a pollution free environment was a human right and this was being denied to the citizens in many places, including Kochi.
\nThe court was hearing a petition initiated by it on its own based on a letter by Justice Devan Ramachandran regarding the fire which has been burning at the waste plant since March 2.
\nDuring the hearing, the lawyer appearing for the Collector told the bench that the Ernakulam DC had advised the Kochi Corporation to be cautious, three days before the fire broke out, due to the rising temperatures in the city.
\nThe Kochi Corporation, on the other hand, said the situation was under control.
\nIt said that another fire had broken out at the site on Tuesday night and that it was put out. It further said that if a fire breaks out again, it can be extinguished immediately.
\nThe corporation also said that there were not enough Harita Karma Sena workers for garbage collection.
\nThe Local Self Government Department of the State told the court that garbage was being collected at the doorstep in the city.
\nThe bench, however, pointed out that there are still areas in Kochi where garbage was not being collected and that there should not be a situation where the whole city is piled up with waste. It listed the matter for further hearing on Friday, March 10.
\nMeanwhile, at the waste plant earth moving machines and high pressure water pumps were being used to extinguish the fire and smoke, an Ernakulam district administration release said.
\nWork was progressing at a rapid pace with around 31 earth moving machines being deployed at the site and orders were issued to the Tehsildars to bring more such machines from the district and outside, the release said.
\nNaval helicopters were also deployed to pump water from above when the wind direction was unfavourable for ground-based operations, it said. (PTI)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Thiruvananthapuram\/Kochi, 8 Mar: The Kerala government on Wednesday decided that plastic will no longer be taken to the Brahmapuram waste plant where a fire, which broke out last week, is still smouldering leading to thick toxic smoke spreading out into the port-city of Kochi. The decision was taken in an emergency high-level meeting chaired by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-212400","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-national"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212400\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}