AHMEDABAD: While on one hand, the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) has been fining citizens for littering in public places and spending crores on cleanliness surveys, on the other, it has been unable to check illegal dumping of construction waste at the lakes in the city.
The AMC set up 25 sites in the city for dumping demolition and renovation waste. However, sources said that when citizens call up the AMC staff to have demolition waste picked up, it is not done promptly and a fee of Rs 200 is charged per trip.
As a result, people are dumping construction debris indiscriminately, especially at night. Mounds of illegally dumped debris, seen at the lake sites in Koteshwar, Memnagar and Gota, are harming the environment and causing inconvenience to visitors.
“The lake at Koteshwar has been reduced to an eyesore. While the AMC has rid the city of community dustbins, it has ended up making entire plots of land look like dump yards,” said a Motera resident pleading anonymity.
“People dump construction debris at the lake site here at night and there is nobody to stop them,” a Memnagar resident said. Ahmedabad has 122 lakes, of which only 23 are interconnected through stormwater lines. Others are not connected, and in some places, the lakes are filled with waste.
In Aug 2023, the AMC decided to set up a construction and demolition (C&D) waste processing plant in Gota in the western area on a 23,000 sq m area. However, four months after the proposal was approved, the plan to build the plant was cancelled. Later, the standing committee approved a proposal to build the C&D waste plant on 23,000 sq m of land at the Gyaspur sewage farm instead of Gota. Work on it is in progress.
