A walk down to the solid waste dumpsite at Dalman Gaon (Kalimpong), to understand the complexity of waste management in a Himalayan town - by STH interns.

On 13Jun2023, we walked a distance of approximately 5.5km down a steep inclined road to Dalman Gaon, Bhalukhop village, to see the waste dumping ground used by the Kalimpong Municipality for the disposal of the town's solid waste.

Kalimpong has a population of 49403 (2011 census) and is one of the major towns in the Darjeeling - Sikkim Himalaya and like all Himalayan towns, Kalimpong has a lot of development activity (much of it unplanned) taking place; the town is surrounded by a large number of home stays which add to the solid waste problem. 

 

As per the Municipality, it is estimated that 38.4 metric tonnes of waste is generated everyday of which only 10.4 tonnes of the waste is collected and the dumping ground has become a site where every conceivable type of solid waste is discarded.

 

On approaching the dumping ground, we encountered the rusting carcass of a biogas plant set up by the Municipality in 2015 with the intention of making and selling cooking gas in order to generate funds from the sale thereof. The construction cost of this plant was Rs 80 lakhs. It was estimated that the biogas plant could process 3 metric tonnes of organic waste per day with the final products being biogas and organic manure. The project failed due to a number of reasons and no biogas was commercially marketed from the plant.
The non-functional bio-gas plant raises questions regarding proper utilization of resources, loss of public money and accountability.

What was very apparent from seeing the dumping ground was that segregation of the huge volumes and assortment of waste at the dumpsite was an impossible task. Hence the necessity of segregation at the household level.

The Chota Bhalukhop area where the dumpyard is located, is a very landslide prone zone as per Geological Survey of India (GSI). The extraordinary rains of September 2007 resulted in a number of large landslides in this area and at least two landslide fatalities.

The dump yard being located in this zone results in the road to the site getting blocked frequently during the monsoons which causes the disposal of waste on streets of Kalimpong town - which could cause a serious health hazard in a densely populated urban setting. 

Historically, Kalimpong had two earlier solid waste disposal sites. The first dumpsite located above Alaichikhop village was discontinued after villagers protested in 2009 on the waste from town being dumped in their area.

 

After the Alaichikhop dumping site was closed a temple was built at the site to deter any one from dumping waste at the site.

Thus the second dump site was at Bhalukhop (see below).This second dumpsite however, had to be closed after considerable expenditure incurred in the construction because of landslides in the area.

 

 As such the Dalman Gaon dump site is the third dump site of Kalimpong town.

Kalimpong Municipality engages 4 vehicles(2 pickups, 2 tipper trucks) for collection of wastes from different parts of Kalimpong town which operates 3 trips per day to the dumpsite. They have around 20 persons engaged in this job.

After a long walk along the rugged hillside on the western face of Kalimpong, the image of a hill made up of solid wastes, mostly of plastic, revealed the ugly and almost insurmountable problem of solid waste management in a mountain town.

In conclusion, the visit to the solid waste dumping ground in Dalman Gaon, Bhalukhop village revealed the pressing need to reduce the amount of waste being produced in Kalimpong town especially because tourism is adding more and more waste to the mountains and to stringently implement the ban on single use plastics.
There is also an urgent need to launch a concerted campaign to raise awareness on the importance of household segregation of waste in Kalimpong.

Report by Interns with SaveTheHills (STH)

Akshima - IIT (Mandi)
Yogesh K Vijay - IIT (Mandi)
Mohd. Ashiq - IIT (Mandi)
Mohd. Salih - IIT (Mandi)

with guidance from

Praful Rao
Kalimpong district,
Darjeeling- Sikkim Himalaya
savethehills@gmail.com
9475033744

Solid Waste Management meeting in Kalimpong - 08Feb2020

Praful Rao,
Kalimpong District,
Darjeeling - Sikkim Himalaya

Extreme thunderstorm at Kalimpong (20Sep2019)

Photo credits : Ms Shreya Gurung

* Having worked on the landslide problem of this region, I am very worried when we have intense rainfall towards the end of the monsoons. Some of our major landslide events (Oct 1968, Sep2007) have taken place at this time when the soil is saturated in the months of monsoon rain and a heavy downpour occurs triggering slope failure.
Last evening, we were lucky - the rainfall was extreme and intense reaching 215mm/hr and staying over a 100mm/hr for a good 20mins. Maybe what saved us was:
a. The past 10days have seen deficient rainfall with the last 2 days being dry.
b. The storm quickly moved away from us and within an hour we were dry again.
* And this seems to be the new normal where we alternate between rainfall deficiencies and surplus, where we either have no water and our fields and springs are dry or when we have so much water that it causes landslides and death.
* Having said this, I would also like to bring to light the recent landslides in Tsong, Yuksom area of Sikkim where there was no warning of heavy rain in the area as in the case of Kalimpong yesterday. These small local weather events which can result in heavy downpours but do not show up on satellite imagery and therefore give no warning are increasingly the ones we must guard against.


Total rainfall in the thunderstorm on 20Sep2019 42.7mm



Praful Rao
Kalimpong district
Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalaya