Angry residents charge in to Bio–waste Energy generation plant

Do Eco friendly initiatives by the government always turn out to be people friendly too? Apparently not, if one has to go by the unusual incident that happened last Wednesday in suburban Chennai. A group of angry residents from the Venkatamangalam and Kandigai localities south of Tambaram in Chennai, breached in to a Bio-Methanisation waste-to-energy plant located in their neighborhood and vandalized some of the equipment there. This, they did because of the unbearably heavy stench that had been emanating from the centre.
According to the representatives (of residents), the collective waste gathered from the Tambaram, Pallavaram and Sembakkam municipalities and brought to the Venkatamangalam plant, caused such high levels of air pollution and pungent odour that even surrounding areas such as Madambakkam, Vengampakkam and Kaspapuram were affected by it and couldn’t escape from the unbearable stench.
Cases of nausea and headache were often reported among the residents of these areas ever since the plant had begun test runs a few months ago.
The plant was one of the 15 centers planned throughout Chennai and this Venkatamangalam plant was constructed at a cost of 450 million Indian Rupees and is said to have a power generating capacity of 3MW. This ambitious project is also said to be completely indigenous, right from the design phase to the building stage, with the required technology provided by the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) which comes under the umbrella of the Department of Atomic energy (DAE). It is reported to be a non-incinerating facility that is capable of generating power from solid waste and was expected to vastly improve the poor state of waste management in the metropolis by preventing huge amounts of garbage getting dumped in open spaces and being burnt that in turn resulted in a considerable rise in air pollution levels.
The residents resorted to this extreme step on Wednesday after their earlier protests- held in front of the plant a couple of months ago, did not yield any fruitful results, in spite of assurances from the concerned authorities. The residents have laid their demands that odourless dry waste alone should be sent to the plant.
Vijay Ram