Delhi’s 'unbearable' air: Residents choke as waste-to-energy plants escape GRAP action

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Families living near Delhi’s waste-to-energy plants are enduring a perennial air pollution crisis, with conditions becoming “unbearable” during the winter months, TOI reported. Communities in the shadows of the facilities at Okhla, Narela-Bawana, Ghazipur and Tehkhand report being choked by persistent smoke, acrid odours and the stench of burning rubbish nightly.

Despite the severe impact, these plants remain conspicuously absent from the city’s flagship anti-pollution framework, the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP), leaving residents exposed to one of Delhi’s most contentious and locally devastating emission sources.

The plants burn approximately 8,000 metric tonnes of poorly segregated municipal solid waste every day, often in close proximity to densely populated residential zones. This daily operation releases a cocktail of spurious gases and particulate matter, creating a year-round foul atmosphere that intensifies with the winter cold.

In Sanoth village near the Narela-Bawana facility, resident Rajpal Saini described a dire situation as cited by TOI. “GRAP suggests that people should be indoors during peak pollution hours, but in our locality we can’t even do that because it’s suffocating indoors as well,” he said.

He appealed for official recognition of their plight, stating, “Not a single person here is without a disease. We can’t breathe properly… I would request authorities to visit us during peak pollution hours or at least install an AQI monitoring station to get the real picture.”

The ordeal is a familiar one for those living near the Okhla plant. UK Bharadwaj, president of the Sukhdev Vihar Residents’ Welfare Association, pointed out a regulatory discrepancy to TOI. “GRAP covers power plants within a 300-km radius of Delhi but not the WTE plants in densely packed areas,” he stated.

He further revealed that both the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) and the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) had previously detected toxic emissions from the Okhla facility, which he said affects a wide swathe of south Delhi including Jasola, Sarita Vihar, New Friends Colony and Haji Colony.

The controversy surrounding these plants sits in stark contrast to their official purpose. Delhi currently operates four such facilities, which process more than 7,000 tonnes of the 11,000 tonnes of waste the city generates daily, helping to manage the capital’s immense garbage challenge while contributing to its energy grid. A fifth plant has been approved for Bawana.

Yet, for the residents breathing the resulting fumes, this comes at an unacceptable cost. Their repeated calls for the plants to be brought under the GRAP framework have so far gone unheeded, leaving them to face the toxic consequences of the city’s waste management strategy with no seasonal respite in sight.