CHENNAI: The expanded city’s

garbage

is proving to be the biggest challenge for the

Chennai Corporation

. With open spaces shrinking on the outskirts and villagers opposed to garbage in their backyard, the civic body has decided to move all the excess garbage in the

suburbs

, which cannot be contained in existing sites, to Kodungaiyur and Perungudi.

The corporation has invited tenders for huge tipper trucks to transfer waste from Athipattu in Ambattur to Kodungaiyur. Trucks carrying about 300 tonnes of waste will travel 15 km from Ambattur every day to reach Kodungaiyur. And 40 tonnes of waste will move 40 km from the erstwhile Maduravoyal municipality to Perungudi in south Chennai. Palavakkam, Jalladianpet, Pallikaranai, Madipakkam and Kottivakkam — which all lacked dump sites — have now taken refuge in Perungudi.

Madhavaram, corporation sources say, is unable to manage the spillover from its 3.6 acre Kilburn Nagar yard, and has decided to send waste to Kodungaiyur.

“It is only seven km of travel and the existing yard will soon become a transfer station,” an official says. The new areas of Greater Chennai are ill-equipped to handle the explosive growth in population, officials say.

“They don’t own many dump sites. They are finding it hard to get new ones due to protests by the local community. No one wants garbage in his backyard and these local bodies face legal cases. So we decided to allow them to use Perungudi and Kodungaiyur,” says a senior corporation official.

The corporation made futile attempts in the past to look for new land in Guduvanchery and Gummidipoondi in the neighbouring Kancheepuram and Tiruvallur districts. An integrated solid waste management project planned a decade ago at Venkatamangalam near Vandalur for the three municipalities — Alandur, Pallavaram and Tambaram — remains a non-starter, with the local community unrelenting.

For the Chennai Corporation, which had met with stiff opposition in the past for ruining the environment in Perungudi and Kodungaiyur, the new arrangement will pose serious problems with the locals not agreeing to transport unsegregated solid waste either from corporation and other local bodies that are annexed.

“It violates the municipal solid waste management Act, 2003, which stipulates that unsegregated solid waste should not be transported and shall not be handled near water bodies. But waste is dumped right in Pallikaranai waterbody,” says K Periasamy, president of Sri Sai Nagar Residents Association, Thoraipakkam.