After Deonar, BMC plans to lease Mulund landfill land for Dharavi project | Mumbai News

Unlike the Deonar landfill, where housing tenements are being developed for families rehabilitated under the Dharavi Redevelopment Project, the Mulund land parcel will be used to establish a ready-mix concrete (RMC) plant and a casting yard to support construction activities.

According to BMC documents, the proposal originated from NMDPL, which approached the civic body in February this year seeking a five-year lease for part of the land.

“The BMC did not have any immediate plan for utilising such a large parcel of land. In the meantime, NMDPL approached us seeking the land for setting up a casting yard, following which the administration decided to lease out the plot as a means of generating revenue,” a civic official told The Indian Express.

The BMC had earlier handed over 124 acres within the larger 311-acre Deonar landfill to NMDPL for rehabilitation housing under the Dharavi Redevelopment Project. Civic officials estimate that 50,000 to one lakh people from Dharavi will eventually be rehabilitated there.

Under the proposal, the lease rent has been fixed at Rs 252 per sq m. NMDPL will pay Rs 9.17 crore in advance, equivalent to the first six months’ rent. Thereafter, it will pay Rs 1.52 crore every month, with the rent increasing by 6 per cent every six months. Over the five-year lease period, the BMC expects to earn Rs 103.47 crore.

However, NMDPL will also remove the remaining waste mound at the site at an estimated cost of Rs 20 crore over 14 months. That amount will be adjusted against the lease rentals, reducing the BMC’s net revenue from the lease to around Rs 83 crore.

“The land is owned by the BMC and has long been used as a conventional landfill. Since the SPV will assume responsibility for clearing the waste and restoring the site to a cleaner and more usable condition, we intend to adjust the lease rent against the cost of remediation. Otherwise, the BMC would have to bear the entire expense, especially as the court has directed us to clear the entire land parcel,” the official said.

Mulund landfill remediation

The 24-acre Mulund dumping ground remained operational from 1968 to 2018, when the Bombay High Court directed the BMC to scientifically close and remediate the landfill.

Since then, the civic body has been biomining nearly 80 lakh metric tonnes of legacy waste, of which around 50 lakh metric tonnes has been cleared. Biomining involves excavating old waste, treating it biologically and separating reusable material to reclaim landfill land.

The BMC had initially targeted completion of the remediation within six years. Officials said the work was delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, natural calamities and rising operational costs linked to global supply chain disruptions.

By February this year, officials said the biomining exercise had reached nearly 90 per cent, after which the work stalled. The remaining remediation is expected to continue over the next decade.