Trash Tower: Srinagar’s ugly truth, SMC’s test
Srinagar, Oct 4: On a damp Friday morning, the drizzle around the Achan landfill in Srinagar brought no relief.
Instead, it carried the stench of decay across entire neighborhoods as far as Nowshehra, Lal Bazaar, Soura, and Eidgah.
Children waiting for school buses gagged, while others covered their noses with scarves and handkerchiefs.
What was once a quiet stretch of land in Syedpora has, since 1985, ballooned into a grotesque mountain of garbage: a trash tower that looms over the city as its most enduring shame.
Achan is more than a landfill. It is Srinagar’s ugliest truth, a symbol of administrative apathy and the price of unplanned urban growth.
The mammoth, untreated, unattended waste mountain is a constant reminder of the apathy of authorities towards people and environment.
Now, after the Srinagar Municipal Corporation (SMC) has committed to addressing the issue that stands out as the ugliest blot on the Smart City claims, all eyes are on it.
Earlier this year, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) issued an order to SMC for a sustainable solution to the issue.
The SMC has pledged to clear over 11.5 lakh metric tonnes of legacy waste by March 2027.
A four-phased remediation plan has been submitted by the SMC and endorsed by the NGT.
The plan aims at zero-landfill dependency through bio-mining, segregation, and sustainable processing.
In Phase-1, which was to start immediately, a leachate treatment plant to apply anti-odour chemicals and bio-enzymes to mitigate smells was to start.
In addition, SMC has pledged to plant 3200 trees to create a green buffer zone.
However, a source in the SMC said, the leachate treatment is yet to start, yet the commission has started levelling the waste mounds to treat it.
In Phase 2, bio-mining of legacy waste will start.
This will expand composting capacity to over 150 tonnes per day.
The SMC will also install advanced segregation units for daily waste.
For Phase 3, expected to start over the second half of the year 2026, at least 50 percent of the accumulated waste is expected to be cleared.
Many decentralised processing centers across Srinagar to handle the city’s 600 tonnes of daily generation will be set up.
Bio-mining 5 lakh metric tons of legacy waste will also be carried out.
Phase 4, the final leg of the plan, will achieve full site remediation.
SMC will convert cleared waste areas into green spaces and plant an additional 10,000 trees.
It will integrate waste-to-energy facilities, including a 300 TPD Refuse-Derived Fuel plant and a 459 TPD Compressed Bio-Gas unit.
This plan, it is hoped, would be a potential turning point in mitigating the health and environmental hazards caused by the constant, incessant, significant waste dumping at the site.
The NGT, in order to ensure transparency, has sought monthly progress reports from the SMC. The JKPCC vigil and a public online dashboard for real-time tracking have also been mandated.
The Achan site has been operational since 1985 on 517 kanal of land in Syedpora and has become a symbol of Srinagar’s waste management challenges and how unplanned urban expansion leads to a waste island with the potential of throwing the entire city population into a cycle of diseases.
