Garbage crisis grips Loni Kalbhor as university blocks access to dumping site

Pune: The tiny arms and legs of Razia Tamboli's six-month-old granddaughter are covered with red mosquito bites. Next door, her neighbour, Shubhangi Honerao, looks out on the street in despair. She is unsure how she will find a clean spot to raise the Gudi outside her house on Thursday to celebrate Gudi Padwa, the Maharashtrian New Year; her view is currently dominated by an overflowing tractor filled with rotting garbage parked next to the gram panchayat building.As dark clouds gathered on Wednesday afternoon, providing a brief respite from the summer heat, the change in weather only deepened the villagers' anxiety. "The garbage hasn't been picked up since Saturday. Despite the dry heat, the stench is already unbearable. If it rains, the filth will flow onto the roads, and we won't be able to step outside," said Honerao.The village of Loni Kalbhor has been struggling with mounting waste since Saturday, when MIT-ADT University blocked the access road to the traditional dumping site. The site itself is under intense scrutiny; located near the Mula-Mutha River, it has drawn a show-cause notice from the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB) for illegal dumping on the riverbed."We are in the holy month of Ramzan and Eid is approaching. But every morning, the village is buried under more trash than the day before," said Tamboli. "The uncollected waste has led to a mosquito explosion. Even with repellents and fans on full speed, the insects are everywhere. Toddlers are the worst affected. I am terrified the children will contract dengue or malaria."The neighborhood, situated near a Ram Temple and a mosque, is now lined with the charred remnants of trash burnt by desperate shopkeepers and residents. "What else can we do?" asked Rukmini Rathore, a homemaker. "Accumulating wet waste is a massive health risk. Stray dogs are congregating wherever the trucks have dumped. Will the district administration only take notice once people start falling seriously ill?"Historically, the village has maintained a reputation for cleanliness, according to Sushma Kamble, a gram panchayat sanitation worker. However, despite emergency meetings involving the block development office, zilla parishad, and divisional administration, no alternative site has been found to manage the waste generated by a population of 80,000.Nagesh Kalbhor, the administrator and former sarpanch of Loni Kalbhor, says the village is out of options. "The only available land we had was a 7.64-hectare plot (Survey No. 113) behind MIT-ADT University. It is govt land, but the university is refusing us access," he claimed.However, access is only part of the problem. A letter from the MPCB dated March 1 revealed that the gram panchayat never obtained the necessary permissions under the solid waste management rules (2016) to use that site. Tensions reached a breaking point on Feb 26, when the dump caught fire, engulfing the university campus in toxic smoke for three days. Following student protests, the university sealed the gates to garbage trucks.Kalbhor says he is searching for alternative land but has hit a wall. "No one is willing to rent land for a garbage dump. Our only income is residential property tax, which is meagre. We cannot afford to lease land 12km away or pay the high costs of private waste processing companies," he explained.The crisis has spilled over into the neighbouring village of Kadamwakwasti, which shared the same dumping site. In an act of desperation, the administration there has begun dumping waste in an open space in the center of the village. Nasir Khan Pathan, the administrator for Kadamwakwasti, said door-to-door collection resumed Wednesday only after this internal site was designated."This is a temporary, flawed solution, but at least the waste is out of people's homes," Pathan said. "We know dumping near the river is an environmental hazard, especially with the monsoon approaching, but getting new land is a slow bureaucratic process. We are terrified of what happens if we don't have a permanent solution before the rains start."